


Wiring Issues

by GlamFolk



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Empty Nest Syndrome, F/M, Trying my best, cliche alert, din djarin and his new life without a helmet, if you like flirting and assholes, love sucks but fuck it we're in love, quarantine has been long, step right up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:55:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28923186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlamFolk/pseuds/GlamFolk
Summary: Post Season 2. You're picked up as a mechanic for the Mandalorian's new ship. It's quiet work until it's not.To get spicier as the people demand.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Original Female Character(s), Din Djarin/Reader, Din Djarin/You, The Mandalorian/Reader, The Mandalorian/You
Comments: 196
Kudos: 391





	1. Mute

You’re a mechanic, not a therapist. Or a priest. Or whomever their creed confides in.

Besides, you like to work in silence. Sometimes there are electrical pops or malfunctioning gears that would be otherwise drowned out by music or small talk.

People talk too much anyway. Not comfortable in their own heads. They’re not a slick as they think they are when they try to fill the air with talk talk talk to drown out their own anxiety. Noise, it what that is.

But now you’re trying to think back to the last time you even opened your mouth, and, truthfully, it may have been even before he hired you weeks ago. Everything was over messages- _Kreed recommended you, looking for a mechanic, I can pay-_ before he touched down outside your dilapidated hut a week later to begin your employment. You don't even remember if you waved at him or not. Once you got on the ship it was like you walked into a monastery. He disappeared up into the cockpit and you set about working on the problem in the hull. That’s been every day practically.

Maybe he said something that first morning, but you're not sure. The first week was a blur, most of it spent untangling the mess of wiring in the hull he had made trying to fix it himself. By the end of those first few days, your fingers were singed so badly from these messy nest you finally just decided to cut your losses and replace half of them. Sometimes he would pass by you, hovering just for a moment, but never said anything. Other than that, the only social exchange between the two of you was taking turns making caf and leaving the pot half full for the other.

The only other notable encounter happened in the second week when the hammock you had strung up in a little, out of the way nook had fallen right on your tool kit in the middle of the night with you in it. Before you were even fully awake, there he was at your door (er, curtain), blaster in hand and flipping on the light, ready to shoot the intruder. But it was just you, groaning on the floor, rubbing the part of your spine where you had landed on a wrench. Did he mumble an apology before leaving you to privately writhe on the floor? Or the next morning, when you had been checking out the bruise in the fresher when he walked in to see you crouched on the sink, lifting your shirt and contorting your body around to see your lower back in the mirror. He had left pretty quickly after that, but he must have gotten a good look and the large, angry mark because there was bacta gel left on your newly re-strung hammock that morning. It helped.

So, the routine went like this: he piloted, he went out to hunt, and he polished his guns. You kept the systems working, the lights on, and made the caf in the mornings. Most days he took the drink back up into the cockpit with a little nod of thanks. Sometimes you’d join him, and the two of you would sit silently, sipping the oily, black tar together before a little bell went off in both your heads to get to work. He’d go out, you’d stay in. When he returned and dealt with the bounty, you’d nod at each other like spice dealers in a back alley.

_You’re here._

_I am._

_Still alive._

_So are you._

Then up he went again, into his little hiding place, leaving you in a mess of wires.

Three more weeks into the usual, though, and you were getting bored. There was always something to fix, but lately, your jobs had become more cosmetic, and what monotony was broken up by your silent companion were few and far between, as his jobs took him away for increasingly long stretches of time, leaving you to your little projects. Once you had gotten the door to stop making that awful noise every time it opened, you had begun buffing out the dents and scrapes on the wall. When that was done, you fixed the bum lightbulb in the fresher and the track lights that ran through the ship, up until you got to his quarters. Then, you went to the cockpit and, using some old paint you had found in the ship's storage, that you had nearly pulled a muscle stirring with water it was so old, you color-coded the buttons. Yeah, the fucking buttons. When you decided to join him in the cockpit the next morning, the two of you silently drinking caf together, he pointed to them. You shrugged. You try being on a ship with nothing to do for weeks.

Maybe it was because you were so starved for any kind of interaction, but you began to sit with him in the cockpit more. Morning caf quickly became a routine, the two of you sitting and staring out into space together as you tried to wake yourselves up. Then, when your projects were small enough, you'd haul them up and deposit yourself into the co-pilot's chair, tinkering mindlessly as the two of you cruised through the infinite. In turn, sometimes during the evening, he would sit with you at the table as you ate. He never ate _with_ you, but you always made extra in case he wanted to. Most mornings you'd find an additional empty dish in the sink, and smile in spite of yourself. 

Maybe it would have kept going like this, this socializing like house cats, content to just be doing things around each other, you finding odd jobs and him continuing to do his broody badass thing if you hadn’t brought the caf up to the cockpit this morning and saw him with his head – his actual head- in his hands.

To be fair, you were usually noisier when you clambered up the ladder. And, also to be fair, he didn’t act like it was a big deal. But you nearly dropped the cups. Six weeks working for the guy and you had just kind of assumed the helmet was a permanent thing. Like, maybe he was disfigured or scared underneath that visor, or a breathing apparatus. Hell, you kind of had a running bet with yourself that he might just be a droid. But…ah, nope.

So when he turned to you and you met those big brown eyes for the first time, you jumped, like he had just caught you watching him undress. Hot caf spilled on your fingers.

“Fuck!” You rush over to the chair and set the mugs down before pulling the injured finger to your mouth and sucking.

“So she _can_ talk.”

You swivel around and shoot him a look. He’s sat up now, reaching for one of the cups.

“I thought you were mute,” he says before taking a sip.

“ _Me?_ ” you talk around your finger before remembering it was even in your mouth. You pull the digit out and move to take the other cup before taking your seat. “I thought you didn’t have a face.”

He puts his drink down and gestures with his palm under his chin as if presenting himself. “I do,”

“Yeah, and I talk.” You say before taking a sip. The two of you fall into an easy silence again.

“You snore.” He says.

“So do you,” you counter. “Shake the damn walls.”

There a flash of a smile before he finishes his drink and places the mug down again. Before you know it he’s pulling the helmet back on and standing.

“I’ll be gone a few days,” he says. “I left some credits in the cooking area. Not much but enough to buy anything we may need from the market.” He strides past you and makes for the ladder. It feels strange, not acknowledging how your silent routine has just been unceremoniously upended. But you don’t want him to stop talking.

“Any requests?” you ask just as his shiny little head is about to disappear down the ladder. He pauses.

“…yeah.” He says. “There’s these…blue cookies.”

“Blue…cookies…” you repeat. 

“Yeah,” he says. “like little sandwiches.”

When you don’t immediately respond, he speaks up.

“Just if you see them,” he grunts. Then he drops down before you can open your mouth.

“Aye aye,” you call after him, but the bull door is already opening, and it’s still a much noisier operation that you’d like. You doubt he hears your before it shuts behind him.

Alone in the cockpit, you smile to yourself.

The big, scary Mandolorian likes cookies.

The market ends up having the cookies, which makes you a little happier than you thought it would. The market _also_ has whiskey, which definitely makes you happy. It’s a little pricey, but you plan to tell him to take it out of your pay – which he hasn’t given you yet. So, really, it’s fair game. You keep to yourself as you wander down the stalls picking up the random things you can justify purchasing – soap for the laundry, more ground caf, some produce. You don’t realize until you’re nearly back to the ship how little you talked. It surprises you.

_Thought you were a mute._

Why does that annoy you? 

“Not a mute,” you say to yourself as you key in the door’s code. When you deposit your haul on the table, you hum to yourself, if only to remind yourself that you can. 

"Mute. 'Oh I'm the big scary Mandalorian with my secret pretty face and I never thought to start a conversation with the woman who fixes my piece of shit ship'." You begin to put the goods away. "'I don't appreciate good button paint jobs, stock the kitchen with shit caf, and snore _LOUDER THAN A BANTHA.'_ " You huff as you close the cabinet before stomping over to the table and grabbing the whiskey by the neck. You're just about to put it away before the thought occurs to you.

You hold the bottle up and bite your lip. 

Well, buckethead isn’t here to judge you, and a clean ship is a clean ship.

Fuck. Alright.

Fuck.

You didn’t mean to get this drunk.

You had taken maybe two shots before you began to scrub up the cooking area and for fifteen minutes you thought you had just bought some shitty juice – your Jawaese isn’t great, maybe you misread the label – but now.

Hoo boy.

“You’re good,” you tell yourself. You squeeze the sponge out in the sink and momentarily become amazed just by how much water it can hold. You do it again. And again. “You are sooooo good. You’re just a little drunk and you’re on a ship,” you fall into a sing song rhythm.

Yeah. You’re drunk.

“Yeah, you’re just a little drunk and you’re on a ship, bada bah bah,” you drum on the counter before sashaying over to your little nook to collect the dirty clothes from the shameful dark corner. With more pageantry than is necessary, you swing the door to the washer open and throw the pile in with a flashy swish of your wrist. “you’re doing laundry because you smell like shit, bah dah bah bum” you skip into the corridor and head to the fresher. There’s an extra basket in there that you know is filled with towels, and in this very heady musical moment you’ve decided that you are just the _best_ housekeeper. Gods, he’s lucky to have such a considerate employee. 

“You’re doing the launnnnndry,” you sing as you kick the door open. The lights come on and you shimmy over to the basket. “Cause you’re just so connnssiiiidddeeerrr _ATE_! Bah dah bum!” you bap the top of the basket. You haul the whole thing from the fresher and skip to the washer, banging the bottom against the floor in time.

“Uh! Uh! Yeah!” you crouch in front of the washer and begin loading in the towels, trying not to think about which ones are from you and which are from him. You are not going to think of him naked. “They don’t quite smell, but they need a cllleeeeAAAANNNN!” You reach for one last towel.

This is not a towel.

Oh Maker, if this is his underclothes-

Well, you’d just have to leave then, wouldn’t you? It took six weeks to see his face and hear him speak, for fuck’s sake, if this is what you think you’re really rushing down the hill of intimacy.

Feeling brave, you pull the garment up from the pile and glance down.

_Oh god it’s brown –_

And….not underclothes.

It’s…a tiny robe?

Before you can even begin to worry if this means he has a secret doll collection presented proudly somewhere in his room –

“ _What happened to the singing?”_

-you nearly shit yourself.

“What the fuck!” you kick back from the washer and land hard against the counter.

“ _Don’t stop on my account._ ”

It takes you a minute before you put two and two together. Your eyes flick up to the comm box on the wall.

“Are you- have you been – are you listening to me?”

“ _Are you spending credits on booze?_ ”

You huff and pull yourself up to stand.

“This is a glaring invasion of privacy,” you say, crumpling the small article in your hand.

“ _Don’t worry. I just turned it on to tell you I’m coming back early. But seems like I caught you in the middle of the show.”_

“Ha ha,” you say. “He’s got a face and he tells jokes.”

“ _I’ll be back after sunset. Don’t dent anything drumming”_ And with that you hear what you think is the click of the comm turn off.

“Hello?” you call. Nothing.

“Are you still there?” you try again. Silence. Well, now you’re angry. “You asshole. What if! What if I had been…” you reach for the bottle on the counter and begin to unscrew the lid. “…having a _private_ conversation?” you pour a small amount into the glass.

“What if I had been _actually_ singing? I’m a good singer when I try, you know.”

(you’re not).

The comm is quiet.

“I think this merits a serious discussion about boss and employee _trust!_ ” you screech up at the box.

Nothing.

Maybe that’s what makes you bold.

“What if,” You put the glass to your mouth. “I had been loudly masturbating, huh? Just really going to town, thinking of your stupid, surprisingly sexy face? ‘Uh! Uh! UH! YEAH! Keep the gloves on!’”

Smiling to yourself, and blushing just a little, you take a sip.

“ _Would you have drummed just as loud?_ ”

You spit whiskey over the counter.

  
  



	2. No Glove No Love

First instinct: time to get the fuck out of here.

You’ve got a trade. You’ve got the rest of the credits he gave you. You have legs. Time to go. Pack your shit, throw it over your shoulder, and go. Maybe pick a new name.

Second instinct: go outside, dig a hole, lie down, and cover yourself in dirt. 

It tempting. You think about it, but you’re too drunk to coordinate the specifics, starting with: do we have a shovel? 

Third instinct: drink. Fuck it. Fuck it all. In for a credit in for a cunt-fucking asshole boss who EAVESDROPS on you while you were making very PRIVATE and very FUNNY jokes to yourself. Fuck it. Let’s really see how weird things can get.

But you can feel the whiskey still burning from where it came out of your nose. Give it a minute, maybe. 

Okay, so the final option: just act like it didn’t happen. It was a joke. He was joking. You were joking. The next step after talking is the exchange of humour. Barbs. Jests. What friends do. You’re funny (well you think you’re funny) and as it turns out, with embarrassing clarity, he thinks he’s pretty fucking funny too. 

You decide whatever the next step is, you need to wipe down the counter. Using the little brown...dress? Fuck it, it’s rag size, you wipe the surface down, only realising after that this piece of cloth is a mystery and could have anything on it. Well, alcohol sterilises things, right? You toss it in the washer before turning it on and hauling the basket back to the fresher.

Of course, he takes forever coming back. 

Just really letting you stew in that anxiety. Every little click outside and it’s oh god alright game face come on and inevitably it’s nothing. And you’re just standing there, frozen, like an idiot, ready to act your ass off. Which is bad, because you're as good an actress as you are a singer. 

When the first hour passes, you relax a little. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you could crawl into that shitty hammock at a reasonable time and be asleep before he gets back. Putting off the inevitable until morning, but it buys you time. 

Oh, god, what if he thinks you actually masturbated though. Like, he just sees you already tucked away and he just thinks you really said fuck it and just did it anyway.

What if you did and he caught you. You, just sprawled there with your pants around your ankles and your fingers-

...

...

Oh.

...

You uh...huh.

...

Well why shouldn’t you be able to masturbate thinking about your stupid boss? Who’s he, the Mandalorian purity army (which we will for now pretend is a thing)? You’re a grown woman. You have the stretch marks on your tits and the occasional chin hair and the societal induced fear of aging even though you know it’s misogynistic bullshit but still oh god that is a long grey hair and everything. You can jerk off in the privacy of your nook as much as you please. What? Does he not masturbate? You know he’s had sex because I mean look at him- it’d just be a waste if he hadn’t, the galaxy might as well just crack open then because nothing would make sense.

And another thing- you bet he’s good at it.

Yeah. Definitely one of those tall silent types who’s quiet until they’ve got someone under them. Over him? No, first time would definitely be under-

Then you hear the door. 

Before you can do anything, in the bastard walks, shoving along some dazed-looking small purple man. You forget, momentarily, that you were just fantasying about whether you’d be on your back or stomach when he hypothetically had you splayed out on top of the table. 

You’re standing there awkwardly, but he’s just confidently striding along though. Business as usual. He and the mark disappear out of sight and a moment later you hear the carbonite chamber hiss. 

Then, nothing. 

...Oh come on.

He's messing with you.

You’re about to take a step when you hear his heavy footfalls. You freeze and stand, dumbly, waiting until he’s around the corner, looking at you. 

Say something. You were going to say something! You were going to be really cool and witty and play it off like haha oh don’t friends joke about masturbating about each other all the time?...oh my god SPEAK why are you just frozen there? He’s staring at you through that stupid visor and you may as well be standing with your mouth open wait is your mouth open-

“So is there any left,” he says, finally. 

  
“What?”

“Whiskey.” He clarifies.

“Oh, ah...” dumbly you pull the bottle from where you had hidden it in shame. You hold it out to him and he takes it, studying the label. 

“No wonder,” he says after a beat. “You could probably remove paint with this.” He strides past you, picking up your glass. He’s headed to his quarters before your mouth finally starts to work.

“Wait,” squeak out. He stops, turning towards you. 

“Yes?”

“They, uh, had your cookies.” You scramble to the cabinet and pull out one of the foil sleeves. You pad over to him and hold them out. He stares at it for a moment, like you’re trying to offer him a religious pamphlet. 

“...thank you.” He says, taking the package. He looks back up at you and you try to give him a small smile. He stays like that for a beat before finally turning and walking away. You stay where you are until you hear the click of his door sliding shut.

“Cookies,” you whisper to yourself.

You dumb bitch.

You wake up early the next morning. You make caf- the good stuff this time - and drink two mugs by yourself in the cockpit, watching the sunrise. You didn’t even drink that much and your head is killing you. As you pull on your clothes, you wonder if you really could remove paint with that stuff. 

You change quickly and set the washer to dehydrate the clothes. Then, because you need to be doing something when he gets up so you have an excuse to avoid eye contact and feign focus, you set about fixing the holo on the table's surface. It’s been glitchy since you’ve been here and needs new parts, but he doesn’t know that. He’ll just think you’re fixing it, and that’s what he hired you to do, isn’t it? 

You’re taking apart the motherboard for the third time when he finally emerges. On instinct, you look up at the sound of his door opening and see him walking towards you, helmet against his hip. Fuck. He is handsome, though. He nods at you, and his recognition snaps you out of the trance. You look back down at your work and pull and one of the tiny wires half-heartedly as he pours himself a mug. You’re so concentrated on looking busy you don’t even notice when he sits down across from you until he puts his cup down.

“Morning,” he says. 

“Morning,” you try, keeping your eyes down. You scrape your thumbnail against the head of one of the many tiny screws, entertaining the thought you could remove it this way.

“The chambers full. I need to go meet up make the exchange.” 

You nod. You put the motherboard back into place and wait to hear a click. “Sounds like a plan.”

“We’ll be on the surface for a few days. I have some business there I need to attend to.” 

“Such mystery,” you say before you can catch yourself. You bite the inside of your cheek. Being clever got you in trouble in the first place. You nod. “Whatever you need to do.”

You both sit in the quiet for a moment as he finishes his caf. You can feel him watching on your hands as they fidget with the gadget before you. It makes you nervous, knowing he’s watching you. It never did before, but now the scrutiny feels heavy. You wish you could know what he’s thinking. After a few more moments, he finishes his mug and he leaves the table. You hear the clicking of dishes before the telling hiss of his helmet going back on. You keep your eyes down as he saunters past you. Just as you think he’s about to ascend the ladder, he pauses.

“Maybe when we’re there you can get the part that needs,” he says.

You nearly drop the small screwdriver.

Forgoing your plan to keep your eyes down, you swivel your head back to look at him. 

“What?”

“That’s not going to work if you don’t get a new graphics chip.” He says. You stare at him, mortified.He shrugs. “Just a thought.” 

Then he’s gone. 

You can admit when you lose. Sometimes you can be an asshole, but you have good sportsmanship. He got you. Twice. You’re too tired to pretend otherwise.

So maybe that’s why, after the first of the three hours it’ll take to get to his contact’s planet, you relent and go up to the cockpit for some company. He doesn’t turn when you enter, nor when you sit down and kick your feet out in front of you, leaning back to look up at the stars above you and let out a heavy sigh.

“Do you need something to do?” He offers. You flick your eyes down to the back of his helmet. He’s still facing forward.

“Nothing I can do right now.” You say. “All the repairs left need the ship powered down.” You stretch your arms above your head before sitting up and bending your neck. You let out a yawn.

“That hammock may be the worst bed I’ve ever had,” you say. “I had to sleep on the floor last night.”

“You don’t have it spread far enough,” he replies, pushing one of your expertly painted buttons. “You sleep in a v.” 

“That’s the best I could manage,” you say. “But you’re right. Might as well leave the thing down.” 

You both fall into an easy silence. It’s almost dream-like, sitting under the stars in the low light. You close your eyes, feeling the temptation to just have a quick nap when-

“We can get you a real bed when we touch down.” He says suddenly. You jerk to attention. 

“Hmm?”

“A standard will fit. The loops you hung your hammock on are meant to hang nets for storage. There’s some in there,” he gestures behind him to one of the storage spaces in the cockpit. You raise your eyebrows. 

“Wow, what’d I do right?” You ask. “Getting a whole new setup. You must have come around to the colour coding.”

“...it’s been...useful.” 

You smile to yourself before turning to look out the window. Yeah, it is fucking useful, isn’t it? 

“Besides,” he says. “I didn’t hear the usual snoring last night. Can’t have someone half-asleep working on my ship.” 

“Jokes on you, I’m always half asleep. Fully awake costs more.” 

“Is then when we talk about on the merits of trust?”

Oh god he finally did it. He brought up last night. Clever though. Indirectly. 

“This is when we agree to buy the good caf from now on so I can stay awake.” You say. “That oily stuff is just a step away from water.” 

“I suppose I can agree to that.” 

You shrug. “Write it off as a business expense.” 

“For?”

“Corporate morality.” 

He chuckles, and you wonder why it took you so long to talk to him.

Two hours later, you’re heaving up your guts into red sand.

Maybe you shouldn’t have just drunk caf on a hangover.

Mando, cool as ever, his stupid cape swishing just so, is reloading his guns in the hull. Whether he’s being polite or just is completely uninterested in what you have going on, you’re thankful. When you finally finish and cover up your mess with dirt, like a big dumb hungover loth cat, you stumble back inside. 

“Never drinking that again,” you say. Without responding he cocks one of the guns before reaching it out to you. It’s not the first time he’s left you with a weapon, but usually, it’s just left in the open, like a friendly suggestion. You take the blaster and double-check the safety. 

“This place has been under the New Republic for a few months now,” he says. “But bandits have a habit of coming down to attack travelers.” 

“Seems like a lot of effort,” you hide the gun in the back of your pants. 

“A lot of people would do a lot more than just fly down to attack you,” he says.

“Is it because of my charm?”

“Is that what you call it?”

“I miss when we didn’t talk.”

“Just don’t be afraid to use it on anyone who bothers you.” 

“ _You_ bother me.” 

“I employ you.”

He stands. 

“Yeah, and you know why, too” you can’t fight the smile as you hold up your hands, wiggling your fingers in front of him. “These hands do the real work around here, Mr. Fancy Gloves.” 

He’s silent for a moment, staring you down. It makes you feel silly and insecure. You’re about to say something when-

“If memory serves, you prefer the gloves on.” 

...ah, fuck. 

Yeah. He’s proud of that one.

You can feel his smug smile under that stupid helmet as he passes by you, your face bright red and slack. You take a second to put your eyes back in your face and close your mouth before you turn and see him starting to walk. 

Oh no. He doesn’t get three. He doesn’t get to leave with three.

So, before you can stop yourself-

“Hey!” you call after him. He stops and turns around. 

You swallow. 

“You don’t have to wear a glove,” you hold your arm up and point to your elbow. “I’ve got the implant.”

Smirking at his dumbfounded stance, you reach out and hit the button, keeping your eye on his frozen stance as the hull loudly closes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couldn't sleep and your comments hyped me up


	3. Static

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've got a rating change, boys.

After he leaves, you make another cup of caf. Your back is a solid block of aching mass. The floor is even less comfortable than the hammock, to your shock. If your shoulder wasn’t digging into the hard ground for most of the night, then you were spending hours staring into the wall, going over ever poor decision that had led you up to the very moment you thought reminding your boss you remembered to buy him the sleeve of cookies he wanted would maybe somehow smear the slightest shimmer of social balm on your situation and maybe make him forget he heard you saying you want him to finger fuck you with his gloves on.

Then you stayed up for fifteen minutes, contemplating fingering yourself with one of _your_ gloves on.

Then you stayed up until sunset thinking of all the reasons you shouldn’t do that because the walls are thin.

Then maybe you got an hour of sleep.

After caf you haul yourself up to cockpit and take apart the comm system, trying to find a way you can make the audio clearer. You know the commlinks make a noise when you sync to a channel, maybe if you sharpen the sounds the subtle static that signals someone’s entered the channel could give him away. Only, you end up cutting the sound to the entire system, and you spend three hours panic tinkering, convinced that you’re going to miss a call warning you about pirates or a dust storm or a dust storm of pirates. When you finally get the volume back, though, the sound it even quieter than usual, and you nearly just throw the damn thing against the wall and welcome death.

Deciding to come back to it later, you make for the ladder. The holo pad is still in pieces on the counter, and you make a mental note to pick the part up at the next trade stop. You place your blaster next to your pathetic little screw driver and cross your arms. He must have messed with it. Which means he knows the hardware well enough. Why did he even hire you? Why did he just let you sit there making a fool of yourself?

Shaking your head, you walk over to the washer and begin pulling the dried towels out. Maybe he hates laundry and he wanted someone else to do it. Well who doesn’t. But you’re not even good at housekeeping. If anything, the towels have gotten more scrubby and hard since you took over the washer duties. There were now _three_ stains in the cockpit from not using your oil pan like you’re supposed to, because you’re always strangely confident in the dumbest shit. You have even seen him wiping at one of the spots once and just kept your damn mouth shut. You kick the door shut with your foot begin to fold the towels. You wondered if he noticed the crack in the mirror in the fresher from when you slipped and slammed your tweezers into the corner of the glass. Damn. Maybe you should offer to pay him back.

You begin to worry that he’s probably noticed that weird stain in the fresher too when suddenly he’s right behind you.

_“Hey.”_

“Maker-FUCK!” you drop the towels onto the floor. It takes you a minute to realize it’s the comm again. Fucking sound! You take in a steady breath, trying to sound like he didn’t just very obviously scare you. “We need to get a better system.”

_“I need you to bring the ship here_. _I’m sending you my coordinates._ ”

You hear the holo ping in the other room.

“Woah, hey,” you step closer to the comm as if it’ll help him hear you better. “The only thing I’ve ever piloted is a cruiser. You think my drumming would dent the ship? And you want me to fly?”

You think you can hear him sigh.

“ _Enter the coordinates and lift the ship about twenty meters in the air and engage autopilot. It’ll take it from there.”_

“Ahhh you know,” you suck your teeth. “This seems like an unnecessary risk.”

_“So is picking up a mechanic from a smuggler planet in the Outer Rim. Be here in 15 minutes.”_ And then it clicks.

You wait.

“Well are you actually _gone_ this time?” you ask. You wait a few beats before standing back up straight. You open your mouth to say something else – ‘I’m _not_ going to say it again’ or just a high pitched voice mimicking him, but you snap your mouth shut. You shake your head and turn, striding to the cockpit.

When the ship finally descends thirty minutes later, he’s waiting for you. As you open the hull he is dramatically revealed in all his tall, brooding, asshole glory – the lowering door first revealing a tilted head, then crossed arms, and a slightly cocked leg.

“You wanna tap your foot, too?” you throw at him. Shoving your hands into your coverall pockets, you walk down until you’re stood in front of him daring him to say something. Instead, he looks at the landing gears.

“ _Are you going to be able to fix that?”_

“ _Yes,_ ” you say defensively, even though you’re not sure.

He turns to the front of the ship and nods. “ _And that_?”

You turn and follow his gaze. Fuck. You didn’t know you had even dented the front. Must have been on the second failed lift-off, when you almost landed the ship headfirst into the rocks.

“What are you, appraising it for resale? I told you I didn’t fly.”

“ _I should have believed you.”_

“Yeah, well,” you turn and look towards the cantina entrance. For a moment you think you could go for a drink, then your stomach lurches and reminds you you haven’t eaten. You’re about to ask if they have food in there before a man turns out and begins walking towards you and…

Well, alright.

He’s tall. Taller than Mando. He’s got a flash of grey hair and the closer he gets the more you begin to really appreciate the whole package. You may bite your lip. You’re not sure, you're distracted. You know your masked companion can see you blatantly staring, too. The air between you two is suddenly charged as he folds his arms in front of his body and turns away to await his friend. It's thrilling in a way. 

The mystery man comes to a stop in front of you, and you’re just about to introduce yourself before he jumps in.

“ _Vanth._ ”

“Mando,” he nods. He turns and looks you up and down. Damn, do all his friends look like this? He gives you a smile. “Who’s this?”

“ _My mechanic,”_ he answers before you can.

Vanth ignores him, keeping his eyes on you.

“Doesn’t sound like much of a name,”

Oh shit.

Is he flirting with you?

Your eyes dart between the two men as your smile widens before you answer. You shouldn't be enjoying this as much as you are.

“Terral," you lie for the hundredth time "the mechanic,” something on the ship behind you falls to the ground. You hear Mando sigh. “and amateur pilot.”

“Well welcome to our town, Ms. Terral,” he holds out his hand. You take it and have a just longer than ‘just polite’ shake. He finally looks over to your companion after dropping your hand. “Seems like you’ve kept our mutual friend in one piece.”

“Yeah, I’ve mostly kept him out of the bars and off the streets,” you nod to the cantina behind him. “Least until now.”

“Wel-”

“ _If you’re both done,”_ Mando interrupts. “ _Your bounties are on the ship, and I need my pay.”_

Vanth gives you a look, the kind one kid gives another when the teacher scolds them, before stepping up between you. You turn and watch as he climbs, maybe lingering in certain areas just to make sure he’s using his legs to lift his…legs.

Absolute killer ass.

You can feel a certain someone’s gaze on you though, and you turn back him. The helmet never changes- why do you feel like it changes? Like the visor is just a little bent down in a scowl just now?

“ _Done?”_ he asks.

You put your hand to your chest, feigning offense.

“Sir,” you breathe. “What are you insinuating?”

He sighs, his arms falling to the side.

“ _Why don’t you take a_ look _at that?”_ he points to the front of the ship. You turn and grimace. One of the plates has fallen off.

“I-“ you turn back to say something, like how this is _not_ your fault, you told the stubborn tin head you didn't fly, but he’s already walking up to follow Vanth into the hull, his little stormcloud trailing behind him.

It takes you surprisingly little time to put the plate back on, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a bitch. You have to weld it in six different places, and it nearly swings out and bisects you a few times before it’ll stay put. Vanth and Mando had finished their business deal and disappeared into the cantina for the past hour, leaving you out in the dusty plain to do your tasks. You’re not saying that they could have offered to help you, but you’re also not saying they’re not inconsiderate shits.

At least the suns have almost set. It’s a lot cooler now. You had rolled down the top half of your coveralls to your waist, you were sweating so much. Now the evening air is almost too cold against your arms, and you’re itching to get inside where it's warm.

Just as you pack away your tools and close the hull, one hand jingling a few credits in your pocket, Mando strides out. You’re about to tell him you managed to fix both the issues, just like you were outwardly very confident you would when he speaks up.

“ _We’re done here,”_ he said. He reaches past you to press the code in, but you catch his wrist before you can think maybe manhandling an assassin isn’t the best move. But then again, maybe he should have left more credits for you to stock the kitchenette with food that isn't mostly canned or freeze-dried.

He freezes before turning to you slowly, shocked and maybe a little impressed. You’d be impressed to if you weren’t so hungry.

“ _You’re_ done here,” you clarify. “I need a meal and a drink.”

“ _We have food on the ship,”_ he says, annoyed. He still hasn’t moved through. You can feel the faintest hint of a pulse under your fingers.

“Food tastes better when I don’t have to cook it,” you counter. “I’ll be thirty minutes.” You drop your arm and walk past him. A few paces, though, and you feel guilty. Turning back, you see him looking at you, frozen where you left him. You imagine he’s dumbfounded under there. Who’s the last unarmed person who stood up to him?

“You could join if you want,” you offer after he doesn’t make an movement. You shrug. “Buy me a drink. I did just fix your ship.”

_“The ship you wrecked.”_

“Well if you’re going to be a dick about it,” you roll your eyes. “Vanth still in there?”

_That_ gets him moving. He stands up straight and turns his whole body towards you. Despite yourself, you smile.

“One drink?” you press your luck.

Another moment passes. Then he’s marching towards you, stopping directly at your side, face forward.

“ _One._ ”

Then he’s past you, cape fluttering behind him, and disappears through the door.

“No, _fuck_ you.” you say, fisting your empty third drink down on the table. “I have lived on a desert planet most of my life, and I’ve never heard of a worm dragon.”

"Greater Krayt Dragon."

"Whatever," you wave your hand. "I don't buy it."

Vanth smiles at you over his glass. “Protest all you want, I was there,” he nods to Mando. “So was your friend here,”

“And you battled a worm dragon that eats villages."

Mando shifts in his seat

" _It doesn't eat villages."_

"You're right, that'd be ridiculous." You roll your eyes. Vanth smiles at you. "Besides, I used to talk to people all over the galaxy on holochats, and I heard some wild shit but I've never heardof that."

“You went on holo chats?” he smiles and runs his hand across the stubble on his chin. You bite your lip.

“That wasn’t my point,” you say.

“It’s the point I’d like to discuss,” he shoots back.

“ _Maker._ ” You hear Mando curse before reaching forward and finally, finally finishing his first drink, tipping his helmet back just enough to slurp it down. When he’s done, he plants the glass on the table. “ _We need to leave.”_

“He,” Vanth points to Mando’s helmet before lolling his head to face you. “is such a buzzkill.”

You scrunch your face and nod.

“Bad taste in caf too.”

“But not in companions.” He says quieter, as if only for you.

You feel your eyebrows raise. You’re about to tell him you’ll need another drink before entertaining that kind of flattery when Mando abruptly stands.

“ _I’ll be on the ship,”_ he says. Before you can say anything he’s tossed credits on the table and turned his back, marching towards the door with purpose, shoving past patrons as he makes for the exit. You both watch as he passes through the curtain and disappears into the night. You shake your head. 

“Is he always like this?” Vanth finally asks. You turn yourself back around in the seat and shake your head a bit in disbelief.

“I've only known him six weeks, but yes. Absolutely,” you say. You sigh before you too are standing up. “Better go make sure he doesn’t…” you wave your hand around your head, trying to conjure something clever. It’s not coming. “…doesn’t… _brood_ all over the machinery.”

“Fair enough,” Vanth nods. He stands and walks around the table, gesturing for you to go before him. As the two of you make your way to exit through the crowd, you feel his hand press into the small of your back, guiding you through. It’s like lightning just shot up your spine. When you finally get through the exit, you turn to face him.

“Thank you for the hospitality,” you say. He laughs, and its that kind of laugh that men do when they know you're going to think it's hot and that is very annoying of him. He leans against the door frame, holding the curtain up so it’s almost like he’s about to drop his hand on your shoulder but he doesn't- teasing. Asshole. Standing there, smiling at you, doing nothing but holding up the universe.

“I’m sorry for my friend,” you finally break the tension and nod back to the ship.

“Ah, can’t blame him.” He says.

“Yes you can. I do it all the time.”

He grins and lets his eyes fall back to you. For one second, you think he’s going to do it. Tingles travel up your neck and your chest feels like it's expanding, filling up with helium.

“I bet you do.” He says slowly.

Out of nowhere, you suddenly decide you would this man could slap you across the face and spit in your mouth. And you would swallow and say you’re still thirsty. God, how long has it been, anyway? You try to do the math in your head, thinking back to when you had let someone come home with you. You get the feeling he wants to help you end that dry spell. 

But then he looks look back to the ship.

“Tell our friend,” he says. “Next time we meet, I’m not going to be as sportsmanlike.”

The image of Mando as a card shark briefly enters your head and you’re about to ask what he means when he finally drops his hand down on your shoulder, and you nearly, _nearly_ squeak.

“Take care of him,” he says. “He’s a lot softer than he looks.”

He smiles and pulls his hand back.

“Get home safe, girlie.”

Before you can stop yourself-

“Sure you don’t want to walk me to my door?”

Ooh, you are feeling bold tonight.

He chuckles and shakes his head. “No, I don’t think I’ll be very welcome if I do.”

He nods at you.

“Take care.”

“You too,”

And he’s gone.

Well. Shit.

You linger around outside for a while. The stars are bright, and it’s been a while since you’ve been around any sort of nightlife, small and concentrated as it is. It still kind of thrills you, like you’re a kid sneaking out to the village dances again. And maybe, maybe you want to get back at your boss. Let him sit and stew in worry about where you are, what you're thinking, what or who you're doing. You lean against the ship for a while, breathing in the night air, and wonder how many people inside are going home with someone. You could have gone home with someone.

Sportsmanship, he said. Over what? You? How antiquated. You’re an independent agent, aren’t you? Mando was the one who left. Pissily, but he left. That’s a forfeit, isn’t it?

No. You know that’s not how this works. You know, too, why you felt the need to follow him out after his little storm off. You could have stayed in the cantina, drinking, flirting, daring your new friend to seal the deal. But you didn't. 

Why?

Taking a deep breath in, you turn and press the code into the panel, pushing each number with a little extra force. Slowly, the door descends and you walk in, your legs still a bit jelly from the drinks. Humming to yourself, you press the button to close the hull and your gaze wanders over to the empty kitchenette and table. For a moment, you entertain calling out to him - hey, Buckethead, you still in a mood? I didn't fuck your friend, in the end, if you care-

Then the floor jerks beneath you.

You fall back on your ass and scramble for something to hold as you realize you’re taking off. You pull yourself upright and squat against the wall was your stomach is sucked further down. You stay there, chest-beating rapidly. You hold your breath, not even sure why until you feel the familiar physical pull of the ship readying to enter hyperspace. It always hits you right in the gut- the pull, then the hair of a second where everything is still before you’re entire world is launched forward. It happens quickly, almost so quickly you don’t even notice.

After a moment passes, you stand up like a newborn calf.

And now you’re annoyed.

“Ay!” you snap. You make a b line for the ladder leading up to the cockpit. You climb carefully, the sort of careful you can only achieve when you’re tipsy and every small movement feels like a whole action. You pop your head through the door and look up to the pilot's chair, and there the dumbass is.

And he’s…armorless. Just in a basic tunic and pants, as far as you can see. Like a little boy ready for bed.

Well, almsot. The Jawaese whiskey clutched in his fist gives him away. 

“Just because I wrecked your ship,” You hurl yourself up onto the floor with a less than feminine grunt. “Doesn’t mean you have to try and _kill me_.”

He scoffs at you. You stand up and walk until you’re standing beside him, your arm braced on the back of his chair.

“The Republic has laws against inebriated flying,” you say after a moment, watching as the colors warp around the two of you. He scoffs again.

“Auto-pilot.” He slurs.

…

Wait.

“Are you…” you look down at the whiskey and…oh there is definitely a dent in that. “Wow.”

“What.”

“Nothing,” you say, dropping your hand from the chair. You deposit yourself in the copilot's chair and swivel around to face him.

He looks like he’s going to say something, or turn to you, but instead, he just takes another swig. You purse your lips. 

“You shouldn’t drink alone you know,” you hint, holding out your hand. He frowns, but he holds the bottle out to you.

“Don’t get sick this time,” he says. You roll your eyes.

“I ate my weight in that cantina's starch skins, _Mom._ ” You take an overconfident swig and nearly cough it up. The sensory memory almost makes you gag.

“Impressive.”

You scowl and hold the bottle out to him. He takes it and downs another swig.

“Hmmmmmm,” you sigh, content to press your head against the soft leather of the seat. You swing yourself back and forth on your foot, letting the other tip of you shoe drag along the floor. You close your eyes and visualize the two of you hurtling through space. It’s a nice vision.

You peek your eye open and see that he’s looking at you, relaxed back into the chair. He’s finally turned a bit to face you, and you sit up, your interest piqued under his attention. You're just tipsy enough to push past the residual awkwardness of the day before.

“So, boss-“

“I’m sorry,” he cuts you off. Your face drops before you tilt your head in confusion.

“What?”

“That trick I pulled on you yesterday. If I made you uncomfortable. I’m sorry.” He turns his attention back to the front. You look at the floor, puzzled, before looking back up at him. 

“What, when you kept the comm on?”

“Yes.”

“And you heard me-”

“ _Yes.”_

Oh. _That’s_ a fun new tone of voice.

He clenches his jaw, the muscles in his neck flexing under the blue-white light of space and artificial lights from the control. It makes your stomach flip. 

Oh god. How do we navigate this? Where the fuck is this autopilot?

“I didn’t mind,” you say finally. “It was funny.”

“Funny?” he turns to you. Is he pissed? You sit up and send him a quizzical look.

“Yes…?” you say, carefully. “Come on. You caught me saying something embarrassing. It’s funny, don’t you think?”

He puffs out a breath of disbelief and shakes his head before looking away from you and reaching for the bottle again. “No, I don’t.” he takes another drink and abruptly stands up. Your eyes follow him and for a moment the two of you just stay there, eyes locked. The room smells like his soap.

“We’ll be in the next system in nine hours,” he says, turning to walk towards the ladder. “You should get some sleep.”

You panic a bit. Something about the situation is too weird to just let him go like a sober, rational person might. As if letting him leave now would ruin whatever strange dynamic the two of you had been building up. So, before you can think-

“Hey,” you jump up and grab his forearm. He freezes.

Oh shit.

You’re getting quite familiar, aren’t you?

“Hey,” you say again, and drop his arm. It swings to his side, but he doesn’t take another step. “Hey, look. Maybe I should be the one apologizing.”

That gets his attention. He turns to look over his shoulder at you.

“You know, I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. And that was…raunchy. I mean, I used to punch boys for saying less than that to me in school. I don’t want you thinking I’m some pervert or something. I mean besides how would I even do that? We share a wall and if you can hear me snore I _know_ you’d hear that-”

Oh my god.

Shut up.

Shut.

Up.

“But you know, you are” you gesture vaguely at his face. He raises an eyebrow. “You know. It’s nice. What you have going on. I didn’t expect it to be…nice.”

He doesn’t say anything.

You’re fired. You’re absolutely fired. Kiss that standard bed goodbye, you stupid, horny, drunk-

" 'Nice'?" he repeats.

No, no, no you're too anxious and drunk to be coy or cool. 

"Yeah," you say. "You know. Handsome. Come on, I know you know, you have a mirror- I've seen it, we share a fresher. And it's not like... _oh come on._ Anyone with eyes-"

Stop. Stop talking. 

“-But I am _very_ good and repressing feelings so,” you nod. “It’s a talent. Thank my mom. So…just consider them gone. Like I never said it. We can even go back to that not talking thing if you want. I think that worked for us you know? I did my thing, you did yours, I didn’t annoy you, we snored together-”

He lets out a chuckle. This is a good sign. Yes. Okay.

“So I’m fine. With whatever you want. Whatever makes you, ah,” you swallow. You wish you had drunk more water. “Whatever makes you comfortable.”

After what feels like an eternity, he turns to you.

“You think you made me uncomfortable?”

Oh, those eyes. Your chest is floating again. You’re floating, and the only thing keeping your feet on the ground are those _eyes._ You open your mouth to speak but then close it again with an audible click of your teeth.

“I…” you start. "didn't...I?"

“Uncomfortable,” he says again. He turns his body towards you and it’s like every hair on your body stands up. He begins to walk towards you. “You think,” oh he’s getting closer. Why are you taking a step back? Another? And- oh that’s a wall.

And he’s not stopping.

“that you telling me I can fuck you raw would make me uncomfortable?”

Oh god. All the blood leaves your face.

“Ohhhhhhh,” you say.

THAT’S IT?

“Or the idea that you lay in that fucking mess of a bed,” he raises the bottle in the general direction of your nook. “and fuck yourself thinking of me? That would make uncomfortable?”

“I….” you blink. “I don’t…know.”

“No, you don’t.” he’s in front of you now, and if you were breathing any heavier your breasts would touch his chest. You swallow. His head drops and picks up the hand you burnt with caf those few days ago.

“When you had this in your mouth,” he says, the pads of his fingers ghosting up your hand until your index finger points lazily up. “The only thing I could think about…” he shakes his head.

“Say it.” You whisper.

Instead, he drops your hand. He brushes some of the hair off your shoulder before letting his thumb make little circles on your collar bone and you think you’re going to faint. 

“You can’t just do that,” you say, closing your eyes so you can concentrate for a minute. It doesn’t work. He’s no less intimidating when you open your eyes again, but your anxiety is running with it. “Just…imply something really hot and leave me hanging. Is that a bounty hunter thing? Like a tactic? Honey-potTTT” you’re cut off when his hand finds your throat. Our eyes bulge and you look up at him, but he’s moving in closer, so close your noses are almost touching.

“You talk too much,” he says.

“Well that’s not a very fair assumption, it’s only been-”

“Fuck,” he says before he presses his lips to yours.

Okay. Maybe you don’t need to talk.

And he _is_ good at this. His hand travels up so his thumb brushes along your cheekbone, and you feel his tongue swipe against your lower lip. You open your mouth to let him in, snaking your arms around his neck and raking your fingers through his hair. He growls. He pushes you up against the wall and you can feel something small and pokey in your back, but fuck it, you’d take a knife to the shoulder blade if it meant you could keep this up. His tongue is soft, shyly dragging across yours and his arms come up under your arms and you feel his fingers dig into your shoulders. Your coveralls are still half down, leaving you in this dirty tank and your bands. Without warning he bends down slightly and hoists you up against the wall, spreading your legs until he’s standing in the middle and you can feel him pressed against you. He’s already so hard- you sneak your hand down between the two of you and press against him. He breaks the kiss to suck at his teeth before you feel a sharp jerk yanking your head back- he’s going your hair in one of his hands, pulling you back to expose your neck even more. Like he’s punishing you, he leaves a trail of small bites along the side of your neck and you don’t recognize the sounds you make. When he reaches your collar bone he comes back up, his lips just a breath away from yours, and when you lean in to kiss him again, he pulls back, a small smile ghosting on his lips.

“Oh don’t be such a fucking _tease_ ,” you complain before planting a peck on him. Instead of returning the favor, he lets your feet fall to the floor again before he reaches down the front of your pants and yanks your shirt up over your breasts, revealing your breast band.

“I’m a tease,” he breathes, his fingers running down from his throat to the top of your band. “All day…replaying your stupid glove comment. Could hardly think.” He wraps his fingers around the band and yanks the garment down to your waist, exposing you. The air in the cockpit is cold and you feel your nipples pebble before one of his warm hands covers one and squeezes. The other hand trails down, skimming over the top of your underclothes. He looks back up at your face and…you have to look like a mess. This isn’t fair. Usually, when a man goes all dom on your ass, you have to fight the urge to laugh in his face. But this…

He dips his fingers into your underclothes, raking through the hair there until you feel him _there_ and you let your head fall back to the wall with a moan. He circles your clit with his thumb before slipping two fingers into you and jerking up. You let out another small cry and drop your head forward, where he catches you in a kiss, his hand pumping underneath the front of your outfit. You grit your teeth against the sensation when he pulls back and presses his forehead against yours, concentrated on the work below him. He is really good at this. You press against his palm when he pumps up again, and he takes that as encouragement. He begins to go faster, and you let out another little cry. Oh god, it’s been so long since you’ve done this. Even longer since it felt like this. You throw your head back and it doesn’t even hurt when you feel a bolt scratch your scalp. You are very close, and he knows it. His thumb returns to your clit and presses against it in fast, small circles. It feels like your entire body is being pulled taut. You stretch your legs a little wider, at the point where your brain just wants him to shove his entire hand in, his arm, as much as he can give you when suddenly you crest, and the lights in the sky above you have nothing on the ones behind your eyes.

You breathe out ragged heavy breaths as you come down. When the pulsing stops, he slips his fingers from you and takes a step back, taking in the sight of you, shirt hiked up, bra by your belly button, pants…just rumpled. When you finally get the courage to look him in the eye, he lifts his fingers to his mouth and _sucks._

“Ah-!” you squeak. He drops his hand from his mouth and takes a step forward, catching you in another searing kiss. You’re about to try and return the favor when he pulls away and holds your face tight in his hand, making you look at him.

“Don’t flirt with other people in front of me again,” he says. “not when you say shit…like you did this morning.”

You bite your lip and give him a quick nod.

“Good,” he drops your hand and takes a step back. He brings his hand to his face and rubs his mustache as if he’s considering you. Finally, he turns towards the ladder.

“Get some sleep,” he calls behind him. And with that, he’s sliding out of sight, and you’re left tits out in the cockpit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think it's weird she wouldn't know about the dragons you've missed the main thesis of this chapter.


	4. Humming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this on my phone so if they’re typos they’ll be addressed at a later date

Well obviously you’re not just letting him go to bed.

You’re still standing with your back against the wall and your mouth agape, frozen. You stay like that as you hear his footsteps get softer before disappearing behind his closed door, and the hum of the ship seems to vibrate through you. But then you snap your leg up so fast to take off your boot you nearly knee yourself in the teeth.

”Mother fucker,” you huff. You toss the boot aside and then go for the other, you fall on your ass but it actually helps you in your ultimate goal of pulling the rest of the coveralls down along with you’re underclothes. You pull the shirt and bands off just a quickly, tossing them somewhere in the dark when your naked ass is sliding down the ladder.

You don’t bother to knock, You just slam your fist against the large pad. The door slides open fast and you see his back. He’s facing the wall, pulling off his shirt

”it doesn’t open any quicker if you punch it,” he says before turning around. His eyebrows shoot up as he takes you in.

”You’re...ah...”

”Oh now we’re shy?” You march up to him until you can press your hands against his chest and push him back. He falls into a sitting position on the bed.

” ‘Get some sleep?’ And then you just leave,“ you walk into the v of his legs and slink down to your knees. You go for the hem of his pants and when he raises his hand to help you slap it away. You pull the pants down, politely keeping your eyes on the trousers as you speak. “What is this, a holovid? You can’t just-“

You finally look at it.

Wow.

”Maker above,” you exaggerate in how much you move your head to look around it. “How do you walk?”

He drops a hand to his face.

”Your seduction technique leaves something to be desired.” 

”You’re criticising how I’m complimenting your cock?” You look back at it. It twitches. “If I look it in the eye will it bite me?”

He sends you a look and sits up on his shoulders.

”If you-“

But then you lean forward and lick from the base, and he falls back on the bed with a thud.

Yeah, that’s right.   
  


You slide the tip of your tongue across the underside of the head before taking it in your mouth. You reach down between your thighs and gather some of your own slick in your hand before wrapping it around him, pumping your fist up to meet your lips. You drag your tongue over the head, pausing to draw a circle around the small hole. You feel his fist grab you by the hair and pull.

”Fuck,” he says

Well, he’ll like this next trick.

You hold your breath and take more of him in, wiggling your tongue as it goes down the shaft. Another hand grabs your hair and your scalp is stinging. You bob back up and flick your eyes up to look at him. You take him out of your mouth and smile, holding his gaze and you lick another slow line up the side. He lets out a shakey breath and you take him back in your mouth. You twist your wrist as you jerk back down, and bring your second hand up to press against his balls. He sucks and his teeth and releases one handful of hair, only to bring a fist down on the bed.   
  


You keep going like that for a while before you can hear his breaths getting quicker. You try not to get excited and keep the pace, but your hand begins to jerk up and down quicker, and your lips and tongue technique are getting progressively sloppier and wet. You look up at him one more time before taking him deep into your throat, just in time for him to sit up and grunt. You feel the warmth hit the back of your throat and swallow down. When he lets the other hand of hair go, you pull your mouth back and wipe with your wrist, looking up at his sweating, panting face. 

You stand and look down over him, and he stares up at you, and god you just feel so powerful, lording over this legendary warrior who you’ve just reduced to a wet, heaving puddle. Perhaps testing your luck, you open your mouth.   
  


“Get some sleep.” You turn on your heel and slowly walk out, swaying your hips until you disappear out the door.

Only to get your sleep shirt though.

What, you’re going to sleep on that floor again? Besides, if you’re going to start fucking your boss, you may as well take advantage of the executive suite. He must have thought you were much more committed to the hot and mysterious bit, though, because he’s still in the same position you left him in when you return.

”Make room,” you throw your pillow at his face, breaking him out of his trance. He sits up as you sit down on his right.   
  


“What?”

”I’m not sleeping on that floor again,” you say, giving him a light nudge. As if he’s too puzzled to argue, he moves and you cuddle into space he’s made, getting under the covers and facing away from him. “And mutual sex acts earn one night of bed privilege.”

He doesn’t say anything and you’re worried you overstepped. But you double down. Better he thinks you’re a cocky idiot rather than some love-struck school girl.

” In fact, if you want it back, you buy the bed I was promised,” you raise your hand as if making a point. “Til then I-“

but he cuts you off, snaking an arm around your waist and pulling you back against him.   
  


“You talk a lot when you’re nervous,” he whispers in your ear. You want to say something biting back, or make a joke. But, for a brief moment, you’re not afraid that he can see through you like this. “You need to get some sleep.”

He lifts away from you for a moment to click off the lights. You plunge into darkness and all of your other senses seek him out- then you feel the covers being pulled back, and the creak of the bed and he lowers his body behind yours. His arm wraps around your waist and pulls you close up against him, and he buries his nose in your neck.

It...doesn’t feel real. He’s going to pull away any moment. He’s going to tell you to go back and this was all just a quick fun fuck and you’ll look like an idiot for letting him get past the walls like that. He’s never going to take your dumb little quips or jokes seriously again because he knows how much you wanted this, this comforting, warm cuddle even more than you wanted to suck his dick, which you really wanted to do! And so you hold your breath and wait for him to change his mind.

but.

he doesn’t. 

Even though you know you’re testing your luck, you let one of your hands fall on top of his where its pressed against your belly. A moment later, he lazily gives your hand a squeeze.   
  


And for the first time in days you finally relax. 


	5. Business Call

“ _Alright, pull up._ ”

“Like this?”

“ _Slower._ ”

“If I go any slower nothing is going to happen.”

“ _Trust me._ ”

“Fine. Should I have my hand on this part?”

“ _No.”_

“But when you do it-“

“ _I know how I do it. We’re working on how you do it._ ”

“One-handed seems…wrong.”

“ _Do you want to learn or not?”_

“I don’t know, can I get a more encouraging teacher?”

“ _Pull. Up._ ”

And you do.

And he falls to the floor behind you.

You turn around from where you’re perched in the pilot's chair, careful not to let go of the control, lest you run the two of you into the sand again. He grunts as he pulls himself back up. He reaches over you and covers your hand with his.

“ _I said ‘Slower’_.” He squeezes your fist, making you lower the ship once again. When you’re safely on the ground, you let go and turn to look up at him.

“You know, it only slightly hurts my feelings you thought it’d be necessary to put the helmet on.”

_“If I left it off I’d probably be concussed.”_ But he reaches up and pulls the thing off anyway, depositing it in the co-pilot’s chair. “Better?”

You smile. “Well hello, handsome, you come here often?”

He gives you a look and you feel five fingers grab the top of your head like a claw, swivelling your attention back to the front. “Focus.”

You sigh and reach out to grab the control again. _Slowly_ , you begin to pull up. The initial take-off is shakey, but soon you’re about twenty meters in the air, and neither of you are on the ground.

“Good,” he says. He leans over from behind you and takes your left hand, putting it on the throttle. “Now, keep your right hand on that, and then _slowly-”_

“-The word of the day-“

“-you’re going to push this forward.” He drops his hand from yours. You replace yours on top of the throttle and try to give it as small a nudge forwards as you can, and the ship starts putting along at a pace you’re only 90% sure a child could outrun.

“Good!” he exclaims, and he sounds genuinely happy, like he just taught a kid how to toss a ball. You want to turn around and say something, but you’re too afraid to fuck up. As if sensing your tension, he drops a hand to your shoulder, and you feel a bit calmer.

“Go to that rock formation and when you’re just behind it, pull the throttle back,” you do as he says, trying to maneuverer the ship over to the empty space before bringing it to a still hover.  
  


“Good. Now, lower us down and kill it,” he says. You follow the instructions and the ship lands with much less clunking that you had managed all morning. Once you’re sure you’re both safe, you release the controls and swivel to face him.

“What’s my prize?”

As if the universe wanted to knock you off your high, something pops and fizzes behind him.

“You can fix whatever that was while I’m gone,” he says, nodding over his shoulder. You brush by him and stand on your tiptoes, investigating the still smoking box.

“For fuck’s sake,” you try blowing some of the smoke away to get a better look. You reach in and jerk out a cable, holding the damaged bit in your palm like a wounded snake. “These quick fixes aren’t holding up,” you look around you at the cockpit, mentally cataloguing every improvised repair you’d done over the past week.

“Why ‘quick’?”

“Uh, because I was supposed to go to a market to get parts on Mos Pelgo, before someone decided to cut that trip short” you shake the cable in his face. He reaches up and snatches your hand.

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” you say.

“Sounds like you are,” he hasn’t dropped your hand yet. You take it as encouragement.

“Only because your voice gets kind of low and growly when you’re annoyed,” you bat your eyelashes.

“You have a way of bringing that out,” he says, but not without a faint smile.

“Ooh,” you shimmy your shoulders as if his voice puts an uncontrollable tingle down your body. “Now tell me I’m a ‘good girl’ and I’m really good on my knees-”

He catches you by your throat and you stop, half shocked and half expecting him to press you up against the wall again. You smile, despite yourself.

“Do you like distracting me before I have to leave?”

You nod. “Yes, very much.”

He drops his hand from you and runs his fingers through his hair, exasperated.

“Having you on board was supposed to make me more focused on my job,” he says under his breath.

“I’m very happy to be here.”

“I _know._ You hum sometimes when you work.” He drops his hand from your hair and rubs his facial hair in a way that makes you want to lean in again. “It’s cute. It…makes it hard to concentrate. On anything.”

“Am I fired?” you joke.

“ _No.”_ and you can tell he means it. He’s looking you in the eye and there’s such intensity behind it that you feel stupid for ever having thought maybe that’s what he was saying. “No. I just wanted to tell you.” He looks up at the ceiling and rubs his face again like he’s waiting for an answer to fall down from the sky, and all you can think about is how much you want to kiss a line up the column of his throat.

“You make it hard, too,” you say, and he looks back down at you, surprised. “I mean,” you cough and brush some imaginary dust off your shoulder. “I’m a consummate professional, always on task, never dropped a tool in my life. But even someone like me can admit feeling a pretty pair of eyes on you can get some wires crossed.”

He gives you the smallest smile, and the image is enough to live the rest of your stupid little life on. “Is that what you call it?” He trails a hand up your arm. “Bad wiring?”

“Sparks,” you clarify. You cover his hand with yours. “Yeah, sparks is more accurate I think.” You look up into his eyes again and it’s there again, that look he gave you last night. Only now can you really put a finger on what it is.

Softness.

You smile and reach down between the two of you, taking his helmet from his hands. You pass it back and forth between your hands, testing the weight of it. The inside looks so snug and mechanical and dark. You try to imagine spending so much of your life inside of it.

“Well, someone has to get the credits to keep me in the lap of luxury,” you sigh. You hold the helmet up between the two of you. He goes to take it, but you catch his hand.

“Come back safe,” you say.

He scoffs.

“Mando,” you say. “please.”

He sees how serious your face is, and that must really strike him. It surprises you, too, honestly. You’re not one for seriousness. Sincerity, maybe, but there’s always a wink and nudge attached, just enough slack for you to pull back if someone ever calls you out for so pathetically and shamelessly laying your cards on the table. Seriousness is vulnerable. It scares you.

He can tell.

Of course he can.

Instead of taking the helmet, he brings his hand up to the back of your head and pulls you forward, pressing a kiss on your forehead. You close your eyes and breathe in his smell, trying to memorize it, to coat the inside of your lungs with it. He pulls you into a hug against him.

“I will,” he promises into your hair. You nod and let him hold you for a moment before pulling away and clearing your throat. You hold up the helmet. He takes it from you and puts it on with a hydraulic hiss and the two of you stand there for a moment.

_“Don’t wreck the ship while I’m gone,”_ he says. As he starts to climb down the ladder, you walk over to stand over him.

“I may be doing you a favour,” you counter. “This thing's probably worth more in parts.”

He stares up at you from the floor.

“ _Do_ not-”

“You take everything so seriously,” you climb down the ladder after him. Once you’re at his same level, you turn to consider him, crossing your arms. “I will not take apart your ship without your permission, _sir._ ”

He shakes his head as he moves to let the door down. You lean against the ladder, watching him. Before exiting, he gives you one last look.

_“I’ll be back soon,”_ he promises. You smile. “ _Be safe._ ”

“I always am,” you say. You give him a small salute. “I’ll see you.”

He nods, and after a beat, like he’s trying to decide whether or not to stay, after all, he dips out and heads down the ramp. You walk over and watch him go, your heart leaping when he looks back and sees you watching him. You stay like that until he’s a dot on the horizon.

When you woke up this morning in his bed next to him- well, next to where he should be- you were thrown for a loop. The night before came flooding back to you, and you laid there, staring up the ceiling trying to formulate how to take this next step. How was it going to play out? Awkward breakfast after a drunken hookup? A stilted apology? Maybe a brusque affirmation that what happened last night could _never_ happen again?

Even when you were- you look up to the edge of the bed, where you had performed some of your best work on this ship the night before – _there,_ you didn’t know where this was going. Were you just horny? Everything seemed to have happened so fast- seeing his face, the joke, the jump to sex – you hadn’t really processed what any of it meant. It was all immediate feeling- feeling like you wanted to be around him, feeling you wanted to make him jealous, feeling you wanted to fall asleep next to him – it all felt very fast and loose. Decisions made on animal instinct, rather than any rational thought. But what shocked you was just how much you found yourself just okay with that. Maybe your body knew something your _once again_ hungover brain could not quite grasp. You picked the sheets up and gave them a smell. They smelled like him, and you felt your anxiety die.

As if he could sense your turmoil, he entered the room. Your heart leapt at the sight and you scrambled to sit up, reaching to the ends of your mind for a quip, something to deescalate the tension you had single-handedly built up.

“Hey….” You scrambled. “you.”

Well, they can’t all be winners.

He’d already had the helmet on, so you’re not sure, but you imagined that ghost of a smile again.

“Morning,” he said. He reached forward and deposited a small contraption at your feet. You bent forward and scooped it up.

“A commlink?”

“A better system,” he said, echoing your words from the day before. You affixed the small clip to your ear.

“No more sneaking up on me, then?” you said.

“…No,” he said. “You should hear static whenever I switch the channel on. I won’t be able to hear anything unless you want me to.”

You raised an eyebrow at that.

“…About last night,” he said finally.

Oh.

You didn’t expect your stomach to drop quite like it did. Something about his tone, like he’s scared.

“Yeah?” you ask. You can feel it. It’s happened before – _we were both drunk…I don’t think it’s a good idea…you bite too hard when you kiss…_ (that last one didn’t quite fit the scenario but still pissed you off, regardless).

“I’m sorry, if…” he’s at a loss for words. “…I…I didn’t mean to….” He shakes his head. “If you want to leave, I can drop you at the nearest port.”

“What?” you pulled the covers up and stand up. You felt his eyes on your bare legs as you walk to stand in front of him.

“I realize how I acted was…”

“Hot?” you finished.

His head tilts back up to you, surprised. You furrow your brow.

“Take this off,” your fingers find the underside of the helmet and pull it up. He finishes the job for you, only a bit reluctantly. When he’s bare-faced, you’re greeted with an expression unfit for intimidating bounty hunter work. He looks younger. Nervous, even. Like a boy on the playground, telling the girl why he really pulls her pigtails in class.

“That’s better,” you dropped the helmet on the end of the bed and turned back to him. He was still stuck, unsure of what to say, how to proceed without the protection of his shield. Nowhere to hide. You reached up and pushed a curl back behind his ear. A small gesture. Intimate. Encouragement. You smiled as it flipped back over despite your grooming.

“I don’t want you thinking this is why…you’re here, or this was my plan. I…”

You’d never seen him so nervous before. You let your hand fall to his shoulder. That was enough for him to look you in the eye.

“We don’t have to do that…again.” He said.

“What if I want to?” you surprised even yourself. Moments earlier, you had been lying in the bed, contemplating what this all meant, how you really felt. But that feeling had returned, that gut, primal urge that you couldn’t control, making the decisions before you could even ask yourself what you wanted. Maybe you already knew. “Would you want to?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“Then, it’s a yes from me too.” You smiled at him. Before he can respond, you reach up and cup his face with your hand. His face isn’t giving anything away, and but you summon all the courage you have to pretend like you’re not a nervous mess when you lean in slowly and press your lips to his. It’s a quick kiss, and when you pull away he’s still a bit stone-faced as if he doesn’t quite know how to process it.

You drop your hand from his face and give him a smile and move to walk towards the door. He catches your wrist and tugs you back, and you stumble in front of him again, ready to ask what’s up before he kisses you again.

It’s deeper than the kiss you just gave him – you were going more for a “have a good day, sweetie, good luck in the moisture fields” vibe- but this is much better. He tastes like caf and a freshly brushed mouth and _him_ and before you can rein yourself in you’ve got your hands on his face and you’re raking your nails up through his hair and then the bastard pulls away, breaking away with an audible smack of the lips. He keeps his fingers in your hair. When he pulls away, his forehead is against yours.

“I have to go away for the night,” he said finally. “I want you to sleep in here.”

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” you say, leaning in to nip at his lips again. He smiles and kisses you back.

“One more thing,” he says.

“Yeah?” you really hope this one more thing is throwing you on the bed and finishing what you started last night.

“I need to teach you how to fly.”

So you practice after he leaves. It’s exhilarating now that you’ve got the lift-off and landing somewhat sorted. You try to speed up, but after nearly running into the cliff face a few times you decide you’d had enough. Without any of the parts you need, doing repairs around the ship is out the window. You try to busy yourself, scrubbing the oil spots in the cockpit, but they’re too stubborn to lift. You sigh before giving up and deciding to go back into the hull.

More than anything, its curiosity that takes you to his quarters. The bed is still a mess, so you kill five minutes making it up. When that’s done, you take a look around. It’s basic enough room, you guess. Not much personality, but you didn’t expect there would be. Just a small table by the side you slept on, a closet, and a small chest. That’s it, really, besides the glaring, fluorescent light that hangs above the mattress. You reach over to the wall and flick the switch off, much preferring the soft light coming in through the small window above the bed. Satisfied there’s nothing left to fix, you go back to the kitchenette where the towels from the day before still lay scattered on the floor. When you bend down to pick them up, your eye catches the brown material again. You pull it out and hold it in front of you, trying to parse out what it could be- surely, he didn’t have a bounty this small. Maybe he gave passage to a mother and a child, and this was left behind? Why would it be in the laundry, then? You try to check the inside for a name scribbled in somewhere, but it’s just a bare and boring garment. You sigh as you fold it into a tight little neat square with the rest of the cloth. Finished with that, you store them away in your nook, deciding that it’ll reclaim its purpose as a storage space.

The rest of the afternoon you are desperate for something to do. You clean the floor until you’re convinced you would eat off them, you hang the nets up in the nook and begin throwing your meagre possessions into them off the floor. You think about giving him a call on the comm but think better of it. It’s on the job, a real job. It may be fun to mess with him when you’re both in the confines of the ship, but if he lost a lead because you wanted to call him and…do what, exactly? Ask him what his favourite colour is?

…

What is his favourite colour?

You’re overwhelmed by how much you decide you want to know. At this very moment, it is life-altering information. You bet it’s something boring, like grey, or grey-brown, or even more likely the answer is broody shrug I don’t know I haven’t thought about it. You feel that may be the answer to a lot of your questions. Questions you suddenly have so many of. Where did that come from? The six weeks you had been in the ship, you had wondered about him, sure, but it never felt as pressing as it did now. Now it felt like those answers would feel like a hit of spice. Your fingers twitched wanting to call him.

_Hey it’s me sorry to bother you; could you just quickly tell me everything about you?_

You shake your head, trying to dismiss the thought. The man has a right to privacy. Intimacy isn’t a race. You need to be patient, even if he’s all you can think about now.

How did this happen so soon? You were ready to have the Marshal take you behind the cantina last night, and now you were practically picking the petals off a flower wondering if your boss had a crush on you. Had this always been here? Even before he took that helmet off? You think back to the time between missions the two of you passed comfortable silence. Someone had told you once that was a rare, wonderful thing – the ability to sit with someone, doing nothing but existing around each other, without the anxiety to fill the air. Maybe it wasn’t the lack of talking that was good, it was the comfort you felt in not _needing_ to talk. To just be around him and feel like you were okay the way you were.

The thoughts carry you through the rest of the afternoon and evening, as you wander around the ship looking for the smallest jobs to do. You finally give up and end up going for a quick walk in the big, sandy expanse, picking up rocks and throwing them across the landscape, imagining they’re skipping on a giant, orange sea. Well after the sun sets, you go inside again and fix a pathetic dinner of canned…something. For a moment you think of pouring yourself another glass of whiskey, but think against it. Instead, you find the holopad and decide to spend the rest of the night fucking with it. It takes you the better part of an hour, but you’re finally able to get the damned thing to connect to a channel. Two twi’leks are facing off in combat, and the image is static. You sigh and flip the display off, deciding to take a shower before you return to it.

Walking into Mando’s quarters by yourself, hair still dripping from a fresh wash, you feel like you’re staying in a hotel. You toss the holopad onto the blanket before crawling in between the sheets. Settled, you pull the holopad into your lap and flick it back on. The Twi’leks are still fighting, and you groan. You mess with the scanner, flipping through various scenes of war and action and bad dramas before you finally get a clear channel.

It’s a man on a bed, his head in his hands. You guess it’s another bad drama when someone else walks into the shot and he looks up, and the music kicks in just as you see two nipples starring back at you.

Oh.

_Oh._

For a moment, you contemplate the ethics of watching porn in the bed of a man you had just fellated the night before. Where was the line with that? He told you to use the bed. He had had his fingers in you. Would it be…that bad?

You squeeze your thighs together as you watch the scene unfold. Maker, the music really is bad. The woman doesn’t waste any time as she climbs on top of the man and impales herself on him in the brutal and grotesque way that only porn can really capture. Still, you find yourself grinding your teeth as she lets out a long moan like this is the best sensation she could have imagined. When she starts to move, rocking herself up and down, your fingers twitch. You try to imagine yourself making those noises, grinding yourself so shamelessly on top of him. The idea is intriguing. You were ready to do just that last night before you put all your eggs in the come-in-my-mouth basket. You watch, your stomach flipping when the man flips the pair of them around and begins to fuck her with desperate, almost angry pumps. He pushes himself up just a bit and sends his hand to her throat, and her eyes bulge when he squeezes. You feel the blood rush from your face, down to the apex of your thighs when you remember how a much different hand felt on your throat that morning.

Alright.

Fuck it.

You pull your shirt up over your head and throw it to the end of the bed. Placing the holo beside you, you shimmy out of your underclothes and throw them down with the shirt. Adjusting yourself, you snake your fingers down until you’re rubbing circles just in the right spot. When the man’s hand reaches up and squeezes the woman’s breast, you mimic him and let out a breathy moan into the pillow. When you slip a finger into yourself, you imagine it’s him again, and that you’re back in the cockpit with your shirt over your tits and your hands in his hair. The woman on the chat gives out another pant, and you add another finger. Without thinking, you throw your head down against the pillow, arching your back, imagining his face above yours, his hand on your throat, and –

Static?

_“yes?”_

You bolt up.

“ _You called?”_

Your hand flies to the commlink on your ear. The button must have been hit against the pillow. You bite your lip.

“Sorry, accident.” You answer. Just before you’re about to ask how his hunt is going, ask him anything to take away from the fact you just accidentally called him while you were _actually_ masturbating,

The dumb bitch on the holovid lets out another moan.

A loud one.

Come on, it can’t be that good.

There’s a pause on the line and you feel all the blood that had previously been circulating around your thighs shoot right back up to redden your face.

“I-“

“ _Are you watching holoporn?_ ”

“I- I didn’t! I was fixing the- I was! Then it just came on!”

“ _and you…called me?”_

“I didn’t mean to! I was- I threw my head back-”

“ _Doing what?”_

Oh for fuck’s sake.

“How was your day?” you try and change the subject. “Kill anyone?”

“ _Yes. Now, what were you doing.”_

“Uh….”

“ _Don’t lie.”_

You sigh.

“I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry. This wasn’t like a sexy move, or anything. I was just being a regular…pervert.” You want to die. You want to crawl up and die.

“ _In my bed?_ ”

“…Yes,” you admit, shamefully.

You hear a long exhale on the other end. He’s pissed. You’ve crossed a line. You scramble for an excuse, an apology, something.

“Man-“

“ _What were you thinking about?_ ” he interrupts.

You’re caught off guard. Surely not.

“I was um,” you relax back into the pillows. “I was thinking about…you.”

_“Really?”_

“Really. And…uh, us.”

“And what were _we_ doing?”

You scoff. “Flight lessons.”

“…”

“We were…ah…in bed.” You admit.

“ _Were you drumming on anything?”_

“Oh fuck you,” you say. “This is embarrassing enough.”

_“Don’t be embarrassed. I want you to tell me.”_

“Aren’t you on a job?”

_“I found him. We’re on our way back.”_ He said. “ _Keep going._ ”

“I am _not_ describing my fantasy while you’re leading some asshole across the desert in chains.”

“ _Dragging, more like. No one’s going to hear you except for me.”_

“How erotic.”

“ _Tell me.”_ he says. “ _And…keep doing it.”_

“You want me to…”

“ _Yes.”_

You take a moment to think. Are you…are you really going to do this? Wasn’t this what got you in trouble in the first place?

“ _I’ve been thinking about this for a while,”_ he says. “ _Since I heard…I’d like to hear it.”_

You feel a shudder go down your spine. Well. Alright.

“You had…just flipped me on my back,” you reach over and lower the volume on the holopad before sending your hands back down your front. “You were on top of me, and my legs were around your waist.” You start touching yourself again, and it feels like your skin is on fire.

_“What were we doing?_ ”

“Fucking,” you say bluntly. “You had just gotten back from a job. I was in your bed when you came in. And…uh…”

_“And what?”_

“We didn’t say anything. You just got undressed and I climbed on top of you.” You pick the pace up a bit more, and your breath becomes heavy. “You, ah, wanted to be on top though. And so you flipped us over, and then you…” You slip two fingers into you and let out a shaky breath. “…and it's really good. I think that’s my favourite part, the first time it goes in. And you feel really good, stretching me and filling me, it’s like your fingers but so much better,” you buck into your palm. “and you’re holding me down, and looking at me like…like it almost hurts how good it feels. Then you wrap your hand around my neck, and I…ah….” You can feel it beginning to build already.

_“Keep going,”_

“and it just feels really good, like I thought it would. Knew it would. I feel safe and scared, and _on._ And you just keep going, fucking me through all the noises. And I’m scratching at your back”

Oh, you’re fully arched now. You slip your fingers out t circle yourself once again before dipping back in, rubbing against your palm like you were the night before.

“-I’m scratching like a fucking loth cat trying to climb a tree, and you just keep going, and I-“ It’s almost there. You’re so close, and he can tell.

“ _I will,_ ” he says. “ _fuck, I'll-_ _I’ll go as long and hard as you need,_ ”

You whine, picking up the pace. “Will you bite my neck?”

“ _Yes.”_ He says.

“ _Mmmmph,_ ” you ride your fingers even harder. Almost there almost there almost there

“ _As soon as I’m back. I won’t even- I’ll leave him outside. I’ll run up and find you,”_ he says.

You nod, even though you know he can’t see you.

“Please do,” you say. “I’m- I’m.”

“ _I’ll be back soon. Soon as I can. And then we’re not leaving the bed until my back is in fucking ribbons._ ”

That does it. You come on your fingers, bending forward and letting out a pathetic little gasp. You fall back onto the pillows, breathing heavily and staring up at the ceiling. You wait a moment until you’ve got your breath back before speaking.

“I…uh,” you don’t really know where to go from here. You’re used to spending the post jerk off time in reflective silence. “Was that…okay?”

“ _Yes.”_ And you can almost feel him through the comm.

“How long…until you’re back?” you ask him.

“ _Another few hours. After the sun is up.”_

“Oh,” you say.

“ _Stay there. Get some sleep.”_

“Why are you always so concerned with my sleep schedule right after I come?”

“ _It’s the only time I know you’re quiet and not breaking anything._ ”

“Ah... well…that’s fair.”

“ _I’ll be back as soon as I can.”_ And you can feel he’s about to click the comm off, and your heart races.

“Hey!” you say suddenly.

“ _Yes?”_

“What’s…” you gulp in some air. “What’s your favourite colour?”

There’s a pause in the communication, and you think for a moment he’s hung up or the line has dropped.

Then something that sounds almost like a soft laugh.

“Green.” He says.

And you catch yourself smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of all the things pandemic depression could manifest in...it's horny Star Wars.  
> Whatever. We take what joy we can in these weird times.


	6. Silk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *lights cigarette*  
> So here we are.
> 
> Jan 29: did some extra edits because I thought ahhh it ended too soon. No beta reader, we die and shamefully come back after overthinking, like men

There’s not much noise when she buzzes in. The bounty is pissy but compliant, and he’s more or less quieted down for the long walk back with a few complaints sprinkled in. The rich ones always like to complain. Not used to walking, especially this one.

Now that he thinks about it, he wishes he had just flown the ship closer. Maybe gotten a cruiser. But he didn’t want to risk it. Not with her on board. And he certainly wasn’t going to have her fly to him.

Maker. That woman could not fly.

“How much longer is it?” The bounty. He turns around to where the large, blue man is struggling to keep up behind him.

“Shorter, if you stopped dragging your feet.”

“You could have gotten us a lift,” he sighs. “I know the bounty is high enough to pay for one.”

”Don’t flatter yourself,” he says turning forward. He tugs on the chain, and the man fumbles forward, sputtering.

”This is humiliating, simply-“ and he goes off on another tangent. He tried threats earlier- the usual do you know who I am and what they’ll do - but that was ended with an elbow to the jaw. Now he’s onto bargaining- he’s got money, he says, and he knows a lot of powerful people. People that could make it so Mando never has to be a bounty again. You like Naboo? He’s got a great villa on Naboo-

He’s about to get a stun bolt to the throat when she buzzes in, and he welcomes the distraction.

”yes?”

“It’s quite the big house. There’s a pool- do you swim?”

He releases the button on the commlink and points his blaster at the mark.

“Not talking to you.” The mark blubbers before he turns his attention back to the comm.

”you called?” He tries again.

There’s an ugly noise on the other end, like something’s rubbing against the mic.

“Sorry, accident.” And she sounds flustered. He’s about to ask what’s the matter when he hears it- a long, over-performed moan from her end.

A moan he, embarrassingly, recognises from a certain vidchannel.

”Are you watching holoporn?”

_“Excuse me?”_

He turns and shoots the sand by the mark's feet to shut him up. The man jumps and lets out a screech.

She comes back on, breathy and flustered. “ _I- I didn’t! I was fixing the- I was! Then it just came on!”_

Liar.

“and you…called me?”

_“I didn’t mean to! I was- I threw my head back-”_

Caught her.

_“_ Doing what?”

“ _How was your day? Kill anyone?_ ”

“Yes.”

Three people, actually.

“Now, what were you doing.”

“I’m not doing anything!” The mark whines. He turns to give the man a look when she responds.

_“Uh...”_

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not!” The man screeches again.

He fingers his blaster.

_“I didn’t mean to...I’m sorry. This wasn’t like a sexy move, or anything. I was just being a regular pervert.”_

“In my bed?”

_“...Yes.”_

“Who are you talking to?” The man pipes up.

He lets out a groan- a mix of sexual and actual frustration. She’s in his bed, touching herself, and he’s four hours out with an insufferable bounty who probably wouldn’t be alive if he had planned ahead and got a fucking cruiser.

_“Man-“_

“What were you thinking about?” He trudges on, tugging the man behind him.

_“I was um...thinking about you.”_

“Really?”

_“Really. And...us.”_

“And what were we doing?”

“Are you-? Hey-“ the mark stumbles.

“Flight lessons.”

He rolls his eyes.

_“We were…ah…in bed.”_

“Were you drumming on anything?”

_“Oh fuck you,”_ she huffs. _“This is embarrassing enough.”_

He smiles.

“Don’t be embarrassed. I want you to tell me.”

_“Aren’t you on a job?”_

“Are you-? Right now? In front of me?” The mark is scandalized. Mando sighs and stops, flipping the setting on his blaster to stun before turning around and shooting the mark in the chest without warning. The man falls into the sand with a heavy thump.

“I found him. We’re on our way back.” He holsters his blaster. “Keep going.”

_“I am_ _not_ _describing my fantasy while you’re leading some asshole across the desert in chains.”_

He gives the man’s weight a tug, trying not to let her know he’s struggling to pull him through the sand.

“Dragging, more like.” He says, jerking the weight forward again. Luckily the man’s body finally inches forward, but catches on an unseen, buried rock. Mando sighs, dropping the chain. He wanted to take a break anyway. “No one's going to hear you except for me.”

_“How erotic.”_

“Tell me,” he says. “And...keep doing it.”

And from what he hears, she does.

He sits on one of the rocks and clenches his fist against his knee as he listens to her, whining across the comm as she touches herself. He answers her questions- god, yes, he thinks, I’ll bite you. I’ll do more than that. When she says she’s scratching his back he almost feels it, sitting up straight at the sensation. He’s hard, and it takes a lot of control not to just pull his pants down and join her, secluded as he is. Instead, he just talks her through it, assuring her yes he’d do this, he’d go as hard and as long as she wanted, anything so he can see her make that face again. It’s the face that undoes him. Does she know she always smiles, just a little bit, before?

When she’s done, he’s nearly doubled over in pain from how badly he wants to reach his hand down his front. He listens to her coming down and almost, almost asks her if she could just come to pick him up. Fuck the ship. He’d let her fly it against the cliff face for thirty miles if it meant he could be with her right now.

He’s about to let her get some sleep, try and figure out how he’s going to get this hulking annoyance across another...fuck, how many miles of desert, when she pipes up again.

“Hey,” she says. “What’s...what’s your favourite colour?”

He drops the chain, caught off guard by the innocence of the question. Minutes earlier she was asking if he would bite her neck while fucking her into the mattress, now she wants to know his favourite colour.

He thinks of the kid, perched in his satchel. He misses him right now. He misses him all the time, but especially when he’s out on hunts. He was so good at breaking up the monotony of the work. His little reassuring gurgles, the feeling of his tiny hand grasping at his finger, the looks he gave when someone pulled something stupid- looks that made him seem so much older than he was.

He laughs.

“Green.” He says.

_“Green.”_ She repeats. _“Green is mine, too.”_

And he knows she doesn’t know. He knows there’s no way. But at that moment, it feels like the stars just reached down and touched the center of his chest.

“...Looks like we finally agree on something,” he manages.

_“We both agree I’m funny.”_

“I never said that.”

_“Your pillow talk needs work.”_

He smiles to himself. Smiling. He’s never smiled as much as he has in the past year.

“Get some rest,” he says. “I’ll see you soon.”

He clicks off the commlink before he does something stupid, like ask her some other innocuous question that has the potential to pull his heart apart. Or worse, keep her on the line until he’s back, listening to her silly jokes and little quips until he can hear her fall asleep, in his bed, in his ship, and listen to that awful snoring until he’s finally at the hull himself. But he flicks it off. Too much. Too soon. For who?

The mark moves finally.

“Wha-?” He shakes his head.

“Get up.” Mando says, standing up himself. He yanks the chain between them, urging the man to his feet. “And get a move on.”

You’ve never really considered the art of putting in a ship’s ceiling. Like, who did this one? Why are there so many dents in the metal? Obviously, you can’t just make one out of mosaic, think of the cost, but the lack of creativity in this is just glaring. You hold your thumb up, like all those cliche artists do in children’s books, trying to gauge...something. Scale? Scale to what?

Maker.

It's been three hours.

You haven’t slept.

You’ve just been staring at this fucking ceiling.

You turn on your side like that’s going to do any good. You’ve tried every position in this bed and you’re still wide awake. He wanted you to get some sleep. Well, you wanted a functioning comm system that didn’t pull any dirty tricks. You wanted to get laid tonight. No one gets what they want on this ship.

Giving up, you throw the covers back and walk to the kitchenette, pouring yourself a glass of water. As you drink it, you try and calculate how far he could be by now. You’re good at math. Always have been. Let’s say he’s walking at 5 miles an hour, and it’s been three hours, that’s 15 miles. The nights on this planet are short, and the sun comes up in another hour and a half. So...five miles out? Seven?

You eye the cockpit.

You could.

But then the thought of landing on the two of them accidentally races through your brain, and you decide against it.

Sighing, you put the glass on the counter and pad back to bed. You settle yourself down in the covers and glance up at the ceiling once more, following the waves and curves of the dents with your eyes.

If you made ceilings, you think...

...if you made...ceilings....

......they’d be.........better.....

And you’re out.

You wake up, feeling someone’s eyes on you.

You creak your eyes open lazily. The sun has just barely come up, casting the room in a purple-orange glow. He’s standing at the edge of the bed, towel around his waist, freshly washed. You give him a lazy smile.

“Hey stranger,” you say. His face softens, and he comes around to his side and drops himself down. He brings a hand to his forehead.

“This guy...talkative,” he sighs. “Slow.”

You scooch over next to him.

“You sound tired.” You say.

“I’m not,” he lies. He turns to you and pulls you in for what you know was meant to be a passion-filled, instigating kiss. You’re not surprised when he lazily drops his head back.

“I am,” he admits.

You grin and motion for him to join you under the covers. He drops the towel and crawls under with you, his eyebrows shooting up when he realises you’re not wearing anything either. Gently, you pull his head to your chest, cradling it with your arm. He kisses your breasts down to your arm that holds his face before bringing his arms around your middle.

“You walked a long way,” you say, raking your nails through his hair. He nuzzles against your breasts and sighs.

“Walked a long way only to break a promise,” he moans.

“Hush.” You say. “You can fuck me senseless when you wake up.”

His hand trails up and down your back, absentmindedly. You lift a leg around his waist, bringing him in closer before you drop a kiss on his head. He lets out a content sigh. It’s warm, the two of you pressed together like this. The room is still and serene and you feel like you’re in a dream. His breath begins to even out, and you’re sure he’s asleep when suddenly, he stirs.

“What’s your...” he swallows. He opens his sleepy eyes just a bit and pulls himself up to look at you. “Your...favourite planet?”

Your heart melts. You brush the curls out of his face before leaning in to press a long, warm kiss between his eyes.

“This one,” you say, pulling his head back to your chest.

He nods.

“Yeah...” he says, already half asleep. “I think it’s mine, too.”

It’s warm, waking up wrapped around another person. And soft. That always surprises you. When you were small, you couldn’t relax if someone was touching you. It made your entire body feel like a current was running through your blood, twitching your muscles, trying to jump out of your own skin. Sometimes it still felt like that. An unexpected touch could jolt you out of your body.

But this.

You’re frustrated because you don’t have the words. “Warm” is not enough, but it’s all-encompassing. It's syrup in your veins. It’s sunshine in someone else’s skin. And, maker, that sounds so unbearably, grossly, _shamefully_ sentimental, but it is so hopelessly true. When you lay there, your eyes barely open, feeling his breath on your chest, you run your fingers through his hair and it’s like brushing silk threads with your fingertips. You don’t even want to breathe because breathing might wake him and waking him would end this and ending this would mean putting yourself back on.

You close your eyes and will yourself to sleep and, maybe, because you’re lucky or you’re tired or you’re just so fucking warm, you do.

When you wake up the second time, you’re on your side, looking a big, powerful warrior right in his snoring face.

This man once shot a bounty in the leg for making grotesque gestures at you your first week, and now he’s drooling a little bit on his pillow.

You wish you could take a photo.

You’re thinking about testing your luck and getting the holopad when he purses his lips and scrunches up his face, turning on his back.

“You snore, too.” He says, his eyes still closed.

“I leave the ship intact.” You point up to the ceiling. “Those dents? I think your breath did that. Just the pure expulsion of noise and air.”

“Your feet are cold,” he says, turning back on his side to face you, fully awake. “I thought they’d get warmer during the night, but they didn’t,”

“Oh really?” You drag one of your feet up his calf, and he gives a small yelp before his hand reaches down to grab it.

You’re aghast.

“The Mandalorian squeaks,”

He groans and drops your foot. “It’s _cold._ ”

“Yeah? Maybe this is better,” you sit up and throw your leg over his waist, climbing on top. You smile down at him before picking up his hands and depositing them on your hips. You lift your hands up. “Hm?”

“The view’s better,” he says, grinding his hips up, pressing himself up against you. You let out a little gasp as his hands slide to your center. Lazily, he begins to circle you, and you bite your lip. You rock against him, dragging yourself up and down his shaft, coating him as he continues his ministrations. You close your eyes, the feeling building. He sits up, making you gasp, and takes a nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around until it stiffens before moving to the other. 

“Wait,” he says, very rudely removing his mouth from you. Your eyes bulge open.

“ _What_?” your tone is much more annoyed than you intended.

“You said I was on top,” he says, and suddenly you’re on your back, looking up at his stupid, handsome face. “That’s what you said last night, wasn’t it?”

You let out a laugh. “Yeah, and there was a guy on a chain leash about ten feet behind you.”

“He’s not here now,” he says, nuzzling into your neck.

“He could be if you’re really going for authenticity. Is he up? I’ll ask if he wants to party-” You make to move before he takes you by your shoulders and slams you back into the mattress. You laugh

“Too kinky for the first time? I get it-”

He cuts you off by slipping his fingers in you.

“Ah!” you arch your back a bit, leaning into the feeling.

“The only way you shut up,” he says, pumping into you again. You bite your lip.

“Yeahitisyoushouldreallydothismoreoften-”

He presses a kiss against your mouth, actually shutting you up for good. You don’t have a problem with it. You pull his face down, deepening the kiss. His fingers pull out of you, readjusting himself to balance on an arm as the other wraps around your waist and pulls you closer. You open your legs, letting him settle in between and press against you again. He’s hard and warm and his lips are on your throat, kissing a line down to your collar bone. You feel his hand grasp at your ass and he grinds against you again, and you let another sad little noise escape your throat.

He continues down your body, pressing a kiss between your breasts before grasping them both in his hands, thumbing your nipples until they're stiff. He bends forward and sucks one of them, darting his tongue over them in such a way you think you're going explode right there. He continues moving down, kissing past your belly button and the flat space just above your pubic hair. He's moves your legs onto his shoulders as you sit up on your elbows.

"You don't have to-" you start to say before he looks back up at you and you see this _thing_ in his eyes.

"Do you not want me to?" he asks.

"I would love for you to, but only if you want-" he reaches up and pushes you down against the mattress. 

Alright. Got it. 

You feel a finger first, and then another, slowly moving in and out of you. His lips close around your clit, sucking lightly and flicking the tip of his tongue over the head. You grip the sheet under you. You can feel yourself coating his fingers. He breaks away to lick you from his fingers to the top again, and you can feel his facial hair tickling and sticking you in a way that is simultaneously painful and so, so good. He curls his fingers inside of you and hits a spot that makes your knee involuntarily kick out. Encouraged, he keeps going, pressing harder inside of you until you feel like your body is becoming tight and wound up like a toy. You reach down and pull his face up, urging him to come up. 

"You haven't come yet-"

"Not before you fuck me," you say, and you surprise yourself at your candor. "Great job though," you say as he crawls back up your body. "Will return."

When he kisses you you can taste yourself on his mouth, on his tongue, as he urges your lips open. You feel him pressing against your entrance and you tilt your hips forward, catching him between your legs, trying to coat the head with your wetness. Getting the hint, he reaches between you and adjusts himself. When you feel him press into you, you throw your head back, nearly banging it on the wall. He takes it as a cue to bit your throat as he fills you, leaving a wet kiss on what will definitely be a mark. When he's fully inside of you it's a mix between pleasure and just a bit of pain from being stretched but in just the right way. You squeeze around him and you hear him let out a heavy breath and he pulls back and pushes into you again, hard. You grind your teeth, pulling him forward and into you as far as you can. Your fingernails catch his skin as they drag up.

"Don't know how long-" he starts. 

"Don't care," you say, and grind up against him, squeezing again. His face scrunches, and he pulls back before slamming hard into you again. He picks up his pace. It's fast and brutal and you feel like an animal, surrounded by the sounds of wet slapping filling the small room. You catch each other in glances – eyes meet for seconds in between the small sounds and the grinding teeth and the kisses and the sweaty skin that glides across the other’s and you keep going, as you feel as if he's trying to drive you into the mattress with the sheer force of his thrusts. You bring your hand up to his cheek and pull him in for a kiss, swiveling your hips as he continues to fuck you into the bed, and god you feel so full but it’s not enough. You tilt your hips down to meet his as he jerks up, his public bone grinding against your clit and you feel the first faint heartbeat of it growing. You repeat the motion, humming as the friction causes a pleasant throb to shoot up your stomach. You grasp his back, and you have to be drawing blood, you’re pulling him so close to you, trying to get more. You hear him growl in your ear as you drag one of your hands down to grab his ass and force his next pump into you deeper.

It’s close now, and he can tell. He pulls away from you and wraps his hand around your throat as he continues to fuck you, hard and fast until you feel your chest starts to feel light and the tension building in your center begins to bleed out across your skin. So close, so close, so close. He squeezes your throat and rams into you, and you’re gone. It’s all over your body, sparking down the veins. Your body clenches around him, fluttering as you ride it out.

Without warning, he pulls out of you, and you're about to complain before he's flipping you onto your stomach and urging you up into all fours. You comply and try not to whine too loudly when he enters you from behind, grasping at your hips so intensely you know there's bound to be bruises left. He pulls you up against him with each hard and fast thrust, and you can hear him groan from behind you as the thrusts become faster, more hurried. He reaches down and grabs you by the hair, pulling you up until his mouth is in the crook of your shoulder, biting on the sensitive skin there. He fucks up and into you, and you clench arround him. Now it’s his turn to groan.

“Where-” he asks, like he’s in pain.

“Anywhere,” you breathe.

He buries his face in your neck, pumping hard and fast into you. Still coming down, he holds you against him tight. His breath is growing ragged, and it’s a matter of seconds until you feel him flex inside of you with a weak gasp. He falls atop you, crushing the air out of you.

The two of you lay there for a moment, catching your breath.

And then you let out a laugh.

As if he’s offended, he pulls his face back to look at you. But you can’t help it. You turn around and beam up at him before leaning forward and catching him in a kiss.

You fall back and smile up at him.

And then the impossible happens.

He cracks a laugh.

“Good?” you breathe.

“Yeah,” he says through a smile.

“Me too,” you say, and you’re pulling him down for another breathy, giggly, silly, delirious kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was like, hey, you're updating a lot. You're giving the milk away for free. Leave 'em wanting a little something. Keep em waiting.  
> But updating has kind of given me a routine in this, the time without time. Waking up to comments makes my day and gets me working on my actual work in the morning, and I miss writing for fun. 
> 
> I was thinking of adding an actual plot to this, by the way, if there's interest. 
> 
> Just had to get these two to fuck. 
> 
> We did it, kids.


	7. Maps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some fluff for your Saturday

You can get away with this.

He’s knocked out cold. What’s he going to do, shoot up and stop you? The man walked twenty miles and then just fucked you three times within an hour and a half span, he’s _wiped._ Besides, it’s right there, practically begging for you to pick it up. You hold your breath as you lean over him, and you’re pretty sure you can hear your heartbeat over his soft breathing. When you finally get your hand around it, you study his face- surely, _surely_ \- he’s going to wake up now. But he doesn’t. You relax a little and fall back onto your side, your present tucked against your chest like he’s going to reach out any moment. You wait for him to move. A minute. Two minutes? Only when you’re convinced he’s really out, do you put one to your lips.

Then the motherfucker stirs.

“No cookies in bed.” He grumbles.

You drop the foil package on the mattress between you. “ _You’ve_ been eating them in bed.”

“I don’t eat them in bed. I eat them _beside_ my bed so crumbs don’t get in the sheets,” he turns to you, his eyes still closed.

“But I’m hungry.”

“Stand up and eat them.”

“Hungry and _cold._ ”

He peaks an eye open at you. You smile and pop one of the little sandwiches in your mouth. He sighs and reaches between you, fishing one out before biting into one.

“You just said-”

“When’s that ever stopped you,” he finishes the cookie off and reaches for another.

“Well if we’re just throwing all decorum out the window,” you lean forward and catch his hand, biting the cookie from his fingers. 

He stares at his bare fingers before turning back to you-aghast? Impressed?

“I’ve killed men for doing less than that,” he says.

“Was your come dripping down their legs, too?” you reach for another and pop it in your mouth.

“You’re hogging them,” he reaches to pull the sleeve closer to him and flips around so you can’t reach.

“Hey!” you scramble up and try to reach over where he’s curled into himself, munching selfishly away. You try and reach between him, but he jerks away again, just the smallest smile.

“Oh _come on,_ I bought them!” you reach again, but he holds them out.

“With my money,” he says, his now blue tongue darting out to lick his lips.

“If we’re being technical, you still owe me my first month's wages,” you try to snatch them again, but he jerks his hand in time. “On some planets, I could have you whipped for that.”

“Name one,”

“Ta-na…ritt.”

“Tanaritt.”

“Yes.”

“What system’s that in?”

“It’s in the system _suck my dick,_ ” you make one final leap for them but lose your balance, falling on the floor by his side of the bed with a _thunk_. He peers down at you before popping another cookie in his mouth.

“You alright down there?”

You sit up and turn to lean your back against the wall. Pouting, you hold your hand out.

“Please,” you say. “May I have one?”

“Now she has manners.”

“I’m _injured._ ”

He considers you for a moment before reaching into the package.

“Don’t suck my fingers,” he says, placing one in the center of your palm.

“Didn’t hear you complaining about that an hour ago,”

He reaches forward and grabs your arm, pulling you up and over him. You settle, straddled around his middle, as he tosses the cookies to the side.

“Hey, I wasn’t-”

“Yes, you were,” he sits up and pulls you in for a kiss, his hand reaching up to cradle your face. He tastes like cookies and still just a bit like you. You smile and open your mouth, letting his tongue swipe across yours. While he’s distracted, you reach out and grab the sleeve before jumping off of him and running out of the room.

“Hey-!” you hear behind you. You dip into your old nook, crouching down by the clean towels as you listen to him jump out of bed and hurry into the kitchenette. You try and chew quietly as you hear his footsteps grow closer. Even though you know it’s coming, you jump a bit when he swings the curtain back and finds you, naked and eating like a rat who just found a roll of bread.

“It’s not very Mandalorian-y to be running around a hull with your dick out,” you say, staring up at him.

“Yeah well-“ he makes to reach down to you and take one of the last remaining snacks, but stops short, his eyes falling on something beside you. You turn to look and see what it is: the little brown robe you folded atop the towels.

“I’ve been meaning to ask,” you say, polishing off the last cookie. “What is that thing? I did the laundry a few days ago-”

“Where’d you find it?” he cuts you off. Your eyebrows shoot up- his tone is suddenly so serious.

“In the hamper in the fresher.” You say. Suddenly you’re very worried. Was this…is this like a private thing? What if it is a sex thing? You watch as he reaches out and runs his fingers along the fabric as if it’s something precious and not a rag you used to wipe the counter.

“Mando…” you say slowly. “Are you…alright?”

He finally looks at you and there’s something sad about his countenance. You stand up, dropping the foil to the ground and reach your hand out to touch him.

“Hey-“

He pulls away from you as if on instinct. You jerk your hand back as he realizes what he’s done.

“Sorry,” he says. “I…um,”

You try not to think of how this looks – two naked adults standing across from each other, blue crumbs at their feet, looking despondently over a tiny brown rag.

“I…” he looks up at you, finally, his hand clutching the little brown rag like you’re going to snatch it away. “I have something I need to tell you.”

“So…you found a magic baby.”

“Yes.”

“and you adopted the magic baby.”

“Sort of.”

“and some Empire crony was sent to hunt you and magic baby down because they needed his blood for…something.”

He nods. The two of you are sat across from each other on the cockpit floor, wrappings of packaged food strewn between you like carcasses. You’re both semi-dressed- you in a tunic, him in his pants – passing the whiskey bottle back and forth.

“But magic baby was in your clan and you were sworn to protect him?”

“He has a name.” he runs a hand through his hair. “Grogu.”

“Exotic,” you hum before taking another sip. You hand the bottle back to him. “So _Grogu_ and you are on the run until you meet another Mandalorian who wants to reclaim the old throne, and then a Jedi, who tells you magic baby needs training before he’s kidnapped _again_ , but its okay because then you’re saved by _another_ Jedi, but not just any Jedi, Luke fucking Skywalker saves you, and then Grogu goes with him for training.”

“Yes.”

“And you may also…be a prince to the Mandalorian throne.” You take the bottle back from him. “Because you have a sword now.”

“…Yes.”

You stare at him for a moment.

“Okay.”

“…‘Okay’?”

“Okay,” you shrug. “What else can I say?”

“You’re not…mad?”

“Why would I be mad?”

“Because I kept all this from you,” he says as if it’s the most obvious thing ever.

“Mando,” you say slowly. “We just fucked three and half times and I don’t even know your real name. I knew secrecy was part of this.”

“It’s Din.”

“What?”

“My name, it’s Din.” He shrugs. “You can’t say it anywhere besides in the ship but…that’s my name.”

“Din,” you try it out on your tongue. “Well, it doesn’t convey the sheer, raw power and fright that ‘Grogu’ instills, but,” you smile at him. “I like it.”

“You don’t have to tell me yours,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“ ‘Terral’ isn’t your real name.” He says, rather than asks.

You purse your lips. “No.”

He nods, reaching back for the bottle. You look down at your hands.

“Are you going to ask why?”

“Why what?”

“Why I lied,” you clarify.

He pauses before taking a drink. He looks so lovely, like this – the night has fallen already and the only light is coming from the control panel and the millions of stars above you, and this thing between you feels so soft and secret like you’re two children sneaking snacks in the middle of the night.

“Do you want me to?”

“…Yes,” you answer, honestly this time. Because it’s been a long time since you’ve wanted anyone to ask. To know you. And you don’t feel like playing games, trying to test if he wants to know you just as badly as you do him. You look up at him and hold his gaze for a moment.

“…Why did you lie?” he asks

“Because it's easier.” You say. “I’ve seen people cut down after someone asks their name. No warning or anything. Just, hey, are you so and so? And then a blaster bolt,” you mimic a gun to the head.

“Usually people have a cause,” he says.

You roll your shoulders. “Maybe. But it’s not worth the risk.”

“You running from something?”

“Same thing everyone’s running from.” You say.

“What’s that?”

“Themselves. Their past.” you stretch out your feet, barely grazing his.

“You don’t seem too bad,”

“Neither do you. You still wear that helmet, though.”

He looks serious all of the sudden. “It’s part of the Creed.”

“I’ve seen other Mandalorians,” you say. “Passed a few in ports. Did some work for them. They’d take their helmets off. You don’t. Not unless we’re here.”

He sighs. “I was brought up not to. After I was taken in by them.”

“Ever?”

“Not until…recently.” He hands the bottle back and forth between his hands. “You live your whole life believing something…it takes a while to break the habit.”

“It’s a shield.”

He nods. “Like your name.”

You bite your lip and sit in the silence for a moment. He takes another drink. The ship hums around you, and you want to tell him everything. You want him to ask, like he did this morning. Ask you about the stupid, small things that make a person. But that’s only halfway, isn’t it? People will ask, but they’ll stop if you don’t give something back.

Unprompted, you begin to crawl between his legs, swiping the debris between you out f the way. He’s surprised when you turn around and lay yourself against his front, but lets his arm fall back onto his knee, walling you into him. You point up at the sky.

“Do you see that one?” you ask.

“…out of the thousands up there?”

You scoff. “It’s big and red. It’s in the center of the Marise constellation,” you pick up his finger and point, trying to align it.

“Yeah,” he says after a second. “The one under the northernmost star?”

“That’s where I’m from.” You say, relaxing back into him. “That’s home.”

“I thought you lived on Tatooine.”

You shrug. “For a few years. Where you picked me up from. But it’s not where I grew up.”

“…What’s its name?”

“Blirk.” You say. “It’s a nothing little sand planet. Rarely even makes it to a map. But,” you wrap your arms around yourself. “It’s mine. Was. Before the Empire took it away.”

After a beat, he places the bottle down beside the two of you. Sitting up, he raises his finger and points.

“That’s mine.” He says. “I was only there as a child... before I was…”

“It’s beautiful.” You say.

He scoffs. “It’s a dot.”

“It made you,” you shrug. “That’s enough for me.”

You turn around and face him. Slowly, you bring a hand up to his face, running your fingers softly along his jaw. He leans into it.

“I want to meet him,” you say. “Your kid.”

“He’s away,” he says sadly.

“What, you didn’t get an address?”

“I…”

“You can find him.”

“He’s training.”

“So he can’t have a visit from his dad? And his dad’s….” you stop for a second, trying to consider your words. “…mechanic?”

“I don’t want to put him in danger,”

“I can’t imagine he’d feel anything less than safe with you.” You say. “I do.”

“You’re…just saying that.”

“I’m not,” you protest.

“I couldn’t keep him safe. I doubt…” he trails off. But you know what he was going to say.

“I don’t,” you reach out and take his hand, putting your lips to his knuckles. “You make me feel the safest I’ve ever felt.”

“I don’t…” he goes to stand. He paces around the small area a bit, looking up at the sky, avoiding your eyes. Finally, he stops, leaning against the pilot’s chair.

“I don’t have that confidence in me,” he says. “You shouldn’t, either.”

You stand quietly behind him and walk up until you’re just steps away from his back. You reach out, thinking you’re going to touch him, pull him back to you, show him that you do trust him, with everything. Maybe you are a fool, having known him for so little time, but you do. You undeniably do.

But somethings can’t be shown, or felt, or imparted through touch. Somethings you have to say.

So, despite every instinct you’ve honed, every compromise you’ve made to keep yourself secret and safe and hidden away since you had to leave that shithole of a planet you grew up on, where you lost them, you lost _her,_ you know what you have to do.

You clear your throat.”

“Antares.”

He stirs and turns around to face you.

“What?”

“My name is Antares.” You say, and you can see in his face he knows you’re not just telling him your name, that there are unspoken words tethered to it, silently hovering above the two of you. You reach out your hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Din.”

And it’s scary, holding yourself out there on a plate, your hand hovering in the air. You wait for him to look at your hand, disgusted, or turn and walk past you, disappearing into the hull and leaving you here, with your stupid heart in your stupid hand. You can feel your skin start to break out in a sweat as he stands there, considering you, and you swear you’re about to apologize or lie or just run when-

He reaches up and takes your hand. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, and look up to meet his eyes.

“Antares,” he whispers, squeezing your hand. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”


	8. Lists

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May come back and do some more edits later, but fuck it.

It’s been a week since you slept together, and here’s what you had compiled about him thus far:

His name was Din. His favorite color was green. He was from a small, beautiful planet. He didn’t make good caf, but he tried. He slept on his stomach, but always with his head turned one way, usually towards you, as you had begun to notice. He liked the way fresh laundry smelled and was meticulous about changing his sheets. He could hold his liquor. He played with your hair in the morning when he thought you were asleep or at least knew you were pretending to be asleep. His emotions were always written on his face, as he never needed to learn to conceal them- it was sweet. He talked in his sleep sometimes, these nothing little sentences like he’s asking for directions, but you would listen and smile and imagine the two of you were somewhere else, living a different life. He has a sweet tooth and hides his snacks around the ship. He liked to watch you work, but wouldn’t hover like other supervisors you’d had. He trusted you with this ship- really trusted you, more than he trusted himself. He cut his own hair. He missed his son.

Also, he was really, truly, very good in the sack.

You two had only had sex that one day before he had disappeared on a mission for a week. He left you in the ship with enough credits to make repairs and buy snacks, enough to keep you busy, but you hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. The first morning he was gone you spent an extra hour in bed, riding his pillow like a it was the last ship off Alderaan before stripping the bed and doing the laundry out of post-masturbatory shame. Maybe it would be better if you could talk to him, but wherever he was the signal was shot and the most you could get would be a few half pronounced words between static. You had given up by the third day, bargaining with some unknown force that if you were just a patient good girl he may come back sooner than expected.

You tried to make yourself busy with the ship now that you had enough parts to really, truly fix it. The cockpit took most of your first day up – your quick fixes had worked in the moment but taking them apart was a bitch and you went to bed that night with more than a few scorch marks across your fingertips. The second day you slept in and fixed the holopad in bed before saying fuck it to the rest of your responsibilities and watching trashy vids in bed. The third and fourth days were spent outside, trying to upgrade the junk’s shields. You hadn’t slept that third night, as by the time you finally let yourself go to bed you still hadn’t gotten them properly working again but your skin was so burnt from the two suns and your arms so tired from lifting and replacing and refixing steel plates that you could barely pull the bedsheets back. It helped though, the exhaustion. You were sleeping better than you had in years and falling asleep as soon as your head hit the pillow was monumentally better than the previous few nights where you laid awake, wondering what he was doing, if he was safe, if he was eating.

Maker, what had happened to you?

Five weeks. You used to laugh at people like this. How much could you know someone in five weeks? You think of the girls you grew up with, who rushed into marriages with whatever flyboy they met at a dance just for a ticket off-planet. Not you, you had thought. You’d be different. They’d have to work for it.

Pssh.

How long did it take you, one smile?

Maybe you haven’t left your old self behind like you thought you had, after all.

You don’t start to really worry until five days later, and he’s late.

You haven’t been with him long, but he is _never_ late. He is annoyingly punctual. You think of your first week when you had been wandering around the hull after a shower, nothing but the towel on your head, only to scramble to your nook when the door started to shift. He had been a day early with that one, and you had nearly had a heart attack as you pressed yourself against the wall of your nook, heart pounding, hoping he hadn’t seen your bare ass as it dipped behind the curtain. Now, though, you would lay your naked self out like a Life Day feast if he would just surprise you with his return.

You don’t even have jobs to distract you, really. Half your job is maintenance, and you haven’t been doing enough practice flys to merit any fixes. Everything else is in working order – _great_ order, actually. You hadn’t told him you were planning on upgrading the shields, or that you were going to clean the outer guns, or that you had finally rewired the system so that the lights would sync to music channels on the holopad (that was more for you than him, but he could pretend to be excited).

So yeah, you were a little on edge when your comm fritzed in for the first time in nine days.

You were sitting in the cockpit, chewing your fingernails and trying to hyperfixate on anything else. Like those three oil stains you still hadn’t cleaned up, or the way the co-pilot chair squeaks or the shape of the rocks he’s dead he’s dead he’s fucking dead and you don’t know where he is and you’re just stuck here like an idiot baby and those godddamn oil stains are laughing at you and they are fucking right idea 

“Zzzzzzzrt.”

You nearly jump out of your skin. 

You snatch the comm from where you had left it dangling on the gear shaft.

”Hello?”   
  


There’s nothing.   
  


Then a burst of static. 

“Mando?” you asked tentatively. For a moment, there was just static. “Fuck,” you curse under your breath and fiddle with the dial. “Mando? Are you there?”

There’s some more static before you hear him. He sounds far away and pained.

“Hey,” you say, your voice heightening. “Hey, I can’t hear you – are you okay?”

More screeching, ugly white noise. Then a pop. You think you hear a blaster go off. 

“HEY!” you scream before you can stop yourself. “Hey! Talk to me!”

The frequency jumps, making you wince. Then, a voice comes through.

“mmmrph…take the ship…” static overtakes the comm again. You nearly crush the thing in your hand.

“Take the ship _where?_ ” you bark into the microphone.

Static.

“For fuck’s sake!” You kick the floor. The air stings your eyes. Not this not this not this 

“Take the ship…and get off-planet.” He finally comes through. His voice is quiet like he’s straining.

“What? No, what’s going on?”

“I can’t…they know where you are. You need to leave.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll keep them off-“ static again.

Your hand twitches around your ear. 

“I’m not leaving,” you say. “Not without you.”

“Don’t fight me-”

“YOU don’t fight ME.” you cut back. You try and get the ship started. After a few frantic guesses it’s roaring to life. “Tell me where you are.”

“It’s not safe,” he says. “I’ll be fine – get yourself off-planet.”

He’s lying. You’ve heard that tone of voice before. It’s the tone people take when they want you to believe them until it’s too late.

“If it’s not safe, you need an extraction,” you try and keep your voice steady. Your heart is pounding against your chest as you hear more blasters behind him, wherever he is.

“Damn it, listen to me-”

“Sorry, you’re not coming through.” You pull the comm off your ear and plug it into the console. A holographic screen comes up before you, prompting you with a menu. You flick through until you find Mando’s comm and ask the computer to search for coordinates.

“You need to leave, this isn't a joke!” he hisses. “They will find you and they’ll kill you, or worse-”

The screen beeps rapidly, giving you his location. You pull the comm up to your lips hurriedly.

“Find somewhere to hide,” you say.

“Antares, _listen to me-_ “

It’s the first time he’s used your name. If it was any other situation, you’d be more inclined to listen.

“No, _you_ listen to _me_.” you snip. “You’re staying where the fuck you are, and I’m coming to get you, and we’re leaving this place together.”

“An-“

“Can’t hear you,” you toss the commlink into the seat behind you and turn back to the controls.

…

…

Ah, fuck.

You’re cockiness got a bit ahead of you. In your desperation to save your – lover? Boss? Sexy combination of the two? – you forgot you’re shit at flying.

Well, in the vids the emotionally motivated protagonist always manages to overcome their obstacles in the heat of the moment, why should you be any different? Just this once? 

Overcome with confidence, you pull the stick-control thing back _slowly_ , like he taught you, and hold your breath as you lift in the air. You wait until you’re ten meters, twenty meters, thirty meters up before you let a breath out.

And then the ship rapidly tilts forward, nearly knocking you out of your seat and slamming your forehead against the console.

“FUCK!” your free hand flies to your forehead as pull the gear back, trying to ease the ship into a sense of equilibrium. The cockpit shakes around you. Behind you, heartbreakingly, one of the shelves you JUST fixed behind you falls, swinging a long, semi-circular scrape into the metal. You haul yourself back into the seat making sure to buckle yourself in before you bring your fist down on the arm rest. 

“FUCK YOU, you hunk of shitting junk, just _work!”_ Your face is wet. You pull away your hand only to see it's covered in blood. Biting the inside of your mouth, you try to enter his coordinates as the whole room seems to shake beneath you. With a final press of a button, the autopilot engages, steadying the ship as it begins to zoom off north.

“Okay!” you say, savoring the small victory. “Yes!” you unbuckles yourself and hop up and, wiping the blood out of your eyes, find the place in the cockpit where Din keeps extra blasters. As the world whizzes by outside, you shove one blaster to the front of your pants and the other to the back before you’re back in the pilot's seat, BUCKLED IN, scanning the horizon for any sign of life or gunfire. Your hand wraps around the control anxiously, squeezing every few seconds as you’re greeted with another expanse of red sand.

“Can’t you go any fucking faster?” you scream at the board. Without thinking it through, you put your hand on the throttle and push the lever forward. The ship kicks into gear and the momentum presses you against your seat so immediately you can barely breathe. Outside is just a blur of orange, yellow, and blue you’re moving so fast. You clutch the seat at the ship jerks into a right turn, then a left, then over a rocky expanse and into a small valley. Your stomach jumps into your chest.

Oh Maker, you’re going to throw up.

“I’m just a mechanic!” you scream to no one before this morning’s caf expels from your mouth and onto your coveralls. Without warning, the ship abruptly slows, nearly throwing you through the window, causing your body to jerk hard against the straps as they cut into your skin. Once you’re sure the ship has stopped, you open your eyes. Cracking your neck, you look up and scan the horizon, trying to gauge the situation in between the nauseous waves.

Oh.

Oh, he wasn’t kidding.

How many stormtroopers can you count in the expanse in front of you –Thirty?Forty?- as if you’re in a vid, they all seem to turn and see you at once. For a moment, no one moves, as if you’re all collectively stunned at the turn of events. You all stay there frozen as the dust settles around you. 

Then, one cheeky asshole raises his gun directly at you.

“Fuck!” you bend down, reaching for the gunner controls as the first blaster shots hit the newly improved shields. You thank your past self as you engage the defenses, and when you pop back up, you see they’ve begun too move towards you, each shooting as they step. You pull one of the triggers…and nothing happens.

“What?!” You shriek at the screen. As if answering you, the words SAFETY ON appear across it. 

“‘SAFETY’?!”

Another blast explodes above you.

You bend forward, the sweat on your forehead beading as you try and remember the fucking color-coding system again. Why did you install a safety option, what fucking space ship needs a safety option for their guns?!

You’re about to press the square red one when another bolt explodes against the glass, directly in your face.

“FUCK!” you scream. You wave your arms at the shooter. “Give me a minute!”

Mindlessly, you press one of the buttons and grab the controls again in both hands. The screen disappears and you feel the mechanic clicking In your hands. 

Taking a deep breath, you pull the triggers.

Red lasers blast out from under the cockpit, and you watch in amazement as three stormtroopers fall immediately upon being struck. Encouraged, you shoot a line up following the retreating few until they too fall in the dirt.

“Fuck yeah! I’m a mechanic, bitch!” you yell. “I cleaned _the shit_ out of these guns!” You turn the barrels on the line still advancing, cutting each one down in turn. As they begin to realize the odds, they try to retreat, but you’re too quick- half madman, half high on the adrenaline, you’re able to aim the blasters on your enemies, your heart surging as each one falls. Your breathing is rapid as you try to quickly do the math in your head- how many are left, ten? Fifteen? – your vision becomes a blur of white moving figures and the orange sand behind them. Your heart is racing against your chest as you shoot over them, through them, and past their corpses.

The comm behind you buzzes. In a delirium, you turn and pick it up.

“Din?” you yell

“Behind you,” he makes out just as the ship is hit. Checking the monitor, you see three cruisers approaching from behind you as the remaining ten stormtroopers advance to your front, finding cover behind the rocks.

Then you do the stupidest, but perhaps simultaneously most brilliant, stunt you could pull.

Holding your breath, you disengage the autopilot.

The ship drops down and for a moment you think you’re going to crash into the ground below before instinct has you grabbing the control and jerking up. The ship steadies, wobbling as your hand shakes trying to keep it upright. Another blast hits the back of the ship and without thinking you jerk the steering backward, sending the ship crashing into the three cruisers. You keep pulling back, dragging the machines under the carriage, imagining the metal crushing beneath you. Once the mangled bodies of soldiers and gear are in front of you, you re-engage the guns and locate the targets. Not many left now. As they raise their guns you pull the trigger, sending a direct burst of flames out in front of you. The men scream, dropping their guns as they fall over eachother. A moment later, they stop moving. 

You wait a moment, expecting someone else to jump out and make a final, heroic attempt. Your heart is still beating against your chest, trying to break out.

The comm buzzes in your lap.

“I…I think you got them,” you hear his weak voice. Remembering yourself, you drop the ship to the ground with less finesse than you planned and pull the comm to your ear.

“Where are you?”

“North corner, behind the rock,” he’s in pain. You jump out of the pilot’s seat and run towards the ladder, practically jumping down a level. You run forward to the door and slam your palm against the pad as the door slowly, slowly, _too slowly_ , begins to lower. Once it’s far down enough for you to clear, you leap over and make for the large rock across the sandy field. Your lungs feel raw as if each breath is rubbing against the exposed muscle. But you can’t stop. The sand kicks up behind you as you round the rock and find him, splayed against the rockface.

Bloody.

“Fuck,” you breathe. You rush forward, pulling his arm around your shoulders as he groans.

“I told you to go.” He says, the stubborn asshole, as you get him onto his feet. He’s holding the side of the leg between you.

“Really?” you huff. “yell at me when you’re safe,” you begin to slowly urge him out from behind the rock.

“There’ll be more…” he says as you hobble the two of you towards the ship. You ignore him, your only concern right now being getting him to the bed, a bacta patch on his leg, and the two of you the fuck off this planet.

“Yeah well,” you huff, pulling him forward again. “We’ll deal with that when it happens.”

“Not long-”

“Then _MOVE.”_ You snap, and your voice is much more venomous than you intended. He seems like he’s about to fight you before he begins to trudge his good leg forward in earnest. You’re almost to the hull when he jerks against you.

“In front-!”

It's scary how automatically you take the blaster from your front and point in the vague direction his voice indicated. You pull the trigger and the laser catches the crawling stormtrooper between what you think are his eyes. When he falls, you lurch forward, throwing him into the hull before climbing over and pulling him in. From your right, you begin to see more troops descend into the dusty bowl.

“Get the door,” he commands, and you scramble over to shut it. As the hull closes, blaster fire shoots through, clipping the wall behind you. You hold your blaster by your face, ready to turn and fire when he speaks up.

“Get to the cockpit,” he says, shooting over the closing door. “Get us- out of here.”

You nod and run to the ladder, bent forward as if that will deflect the gunfire. Three rungs at a time, you climb up into the cockpit and onto the pilot's seat. You grasp the control and jerk up.

You’re sent back into your seat from the force, and you hear something tumbling below you, then a groan from the hull.

“ _SLOWLY,”_ he yells.

“NOT. NOW.” You stabilize the ship enough to engage auto-pilot. In a panic, you click the first option for the next location. The ship begins to power up as you pull yourself from the seat and descend down the ladder. With a jerk that sends you to the hull floor, the ship zooms into space, bumpily breaking against the atmosphere. When you regain your senses, you’re scrambling over to where he lays, breathing heavily.

“What’s wrong?” You begin to pull at his pants, unfastening the belt with bloody, frantic hands. He lets you until they’re around his knees and you can see the damage- a massive wound, too big for a regular blaster, on his left leg. It’s gruesome and bloody and you’re lucky you already threw up your breakfast. You press up into uneasy feet and run to the nook, pulling the medical supplies from their hidden compartment. You run back to his side and dropping yourself beside him.

“Hang on,” you say to him, but more for yourself, as you unfurl a pack of bacta. In your frenzied state the pack bursts open, sending the bandages everywhere.

“Fuck!” you yell, scrambling forward to grab one.

“It’s okay-”

“You shut up!” you snap, breaking a bandage open. Ignoring your queasy stomach, you begin to wrap it around his upper thigh, his blood coating your already red hands. When that one is attached, you add another, then another, until the blood stops trickling. Determined, you reach into the bag and pull out a bacta shot.

“You don’t need to-”

“SHUT. UP.” You say before biting the syringe cap off with your teeth. Testing the needle for air bubbles, you plunge it into his thigh. He jerks forward.

“DANK-“ you press down, releasing the chemical into the wound. It’s enough to send him back onto his back in a daze. Breathing heavily, you jerk the syringe back and wait…for what?

“What else?” you ask frantically.

“What?” he lifts his head, sounding just a bit drunk.

“What else do I need to do? Are you okay?”

“You put enough bacta in me to heal an army,” he says. “And…get me a bit…” he waves his hand in the air before it falls down beside him.

You reach forward and begin to remove his helmet. Once it’s off, you toss it to the side and take in his face. His nose is bloody, but not broken. The sweat sticks his hair to his forehead, and his lip is busted. You reach forward and brush the hair out of his face.

“Fuck, what happened?” You reach for the men kit and pour some of the bottled water on a sterile rag. You reach forward and begin to wipe away some of the grime.

He jerks against the touch before settling back. He swallows and gives a shake of his head “Bad contact.”

”no shit.” You place the rag down and look up and down his body, unsure what to do next. 

“Let’s get you out of this,” you decide. You begin to undo the beskar when he reaches a hand up to your forehead.

“You’re bleeding,”

“Yeah, well,” you huff, pulling one of his armbands off. It’s skids across the floor with a clatter. “You should see the other guy.”

“You…threw up.” He weakly points to your front. You catch his hand and pull off his glove.

“I’m trying to nurse you.”

He shakes his head, closing his eyes. “You should have left me.” he tells you.

“No.” You begin to fiddle with the chest plate. His hand catches yours and your breath hitches. You pause, then turn to look at him. “ _No.”_

“You could have died.” He says, stone-faced.

You swallow. “You could have, too.”

“That doesn’t-” he begins.

“It does to me.” You cut him off. His face drops and – there it is again, his inability to conceal how he feels without his clunky, metal head. You feel your heart surge. He is so soft in front of you and you can read it on his face, see the words written across the bridge of his busted nose as if it were written in blood. You wonder if this is how your face looked when you told him your name, scared and barefoot in the dark. You reach forward and cup the back of his head, lowering him down to the hull.

“It’s okay,” you say. “I’ve got you.”

And, miraculously, he listens.

It’s late when he wakes up with a start. You had managed to get him out of the armor and cleaned him up a bit as he slept. Too heavy to carry, you pulled the sheets off the bed and made a pallet under him before trying to patch up yourself. You stir from where you’ve been laid out on the floor beside him. As he stirs awake you take his hand, rubbing circles with your thumb.

“Hey, hey,” you soothe, reaching forward and brushing the hair out of his eyes – maker, you should offer to cut it for him – and trying your best to calm him. His eyes are darting around the room for threats as he continues to breathe frantically, clutching your hand in his. Once he begins to realize where he is, he relaxes, letting his head fall back on the pillow. He breathes in heavily and exhales through his nose.

“How long was I out?”

You shrug. “Three hours. Give or take.”

“Where are we headed?”

“I…don’t know.” You admit. “I directed the autopilot to pick the first location.”

He nods as if he remembers which it is.

“You’re okay,” you assure him. “You’re safe.”

He turns to look at you. His palm cups the side of your face, and you go to cradle it.

“Are you?” he looks up at the somewhat tended to gash on your forehead.

“I fell,” you explain. “Trying to fly.”

He suppresses a laugh.

“Hey, I saved your ass,” You drop his hand and smack his chest lightly. “Say, ‘Thank you, Antares’.”

He shakes his head. “You should have left.”

“You would have died.”

“You don’t know that,” he says. “I would have been fine.”

“I’ve heard that before,” you say. “They weren’t. You wouldn’t have been.”

“You would have been safe.”

“I’m safe now,” you scoot closer until your faces are closer. You lie yourself against him carefully, reaching up to take his hand in between the two of you. He lets you press your thumbs into into his limp palm, massaging it.

“What if-”

“What if I had crashed the ship with the two of us in it,” you say. “What if I had blown myself up fixing the shields. What if you had learned how to maintain an annoying complex shipwide cable network .” You run your thumb over his knuckles, trying your best to memorize the ridges. You look back up at him. “I didn’t. You didn’t.”

He acts like he’s about to argue, but then he stops himself. He closes his eyes. You feel an arm come around your middle, urging you closer to him. You look up and he catches your mouth in a kiss- a soft one at first, but it quickly deepens, his tongue slipping into your mouth, his fingers in your hair. He catches your bottom lip between his teeth, causing you to let out a small breath. You break away.

“You’re hurt-”

“I’m fine,” he pulls you back in, his hand dipping down into your tunic and fondling your breast.

“Din-” he’s got his hand on your hip, and he’s flipping you over until he’s on top of you. He grinds against your center. You let out a shakey breath.

“We shouldn’t- you almost died-” he pulls back and fixes you with a look.

“I didn’t. You didn’t.” he echoes your words back to you.

Bastard.

“Your leg-”

“Has enough bacta in it to grow a new limb,” he says, catching the hem of your tunic and pulling it up and over your head.

“Well that’s the last thing you need,” you sigh. You roll your hips against where he’s already hard. “You’ve already got this thing weighing you down,”

“Shut up,” he growls, and kisses you.

There’s not that much to take off. After your tunic is gone, he shimmies your underclothes down your legs before you’re helping him with his. Both naked, he falls against you, lining himself up with where you’re already wet and waiting. When he pushes into you, you drop your head back against the pillow and let out a soft moan. He plants a line of wet, open kisses against your throat as he begins to move, slowly. His hand comes up and tweaks a nipple, causing you to wrap your legs around him, bringing him in as close as you can. You roll your hips against his lazily as you feel him hit that spot inside of you. Your toes curl as he continues, his movements so soft, like he’s trying to feel every second.

“Is this okay?” he whispers.

“ _Yeah._ ” You manage. An arm slips under your leg and hoists it over his shoulder and he pumps into you until you don’t think you can take anymore. His free hand drops between you and begins to press against you, rubbing you in tight, small circles as he continues, his pace so slow but so…caring. You can feel yourself getting wetter as he continues pressing up and against you as he fucks you slowly like he’s afraid he’ll break you. You hum, feeling the sensation build. It’s not like before when your head was racing and you couldn’t think straight and everything was stars and his tongue and his hands and sweat and sheets- its steadier. Stronger. You can feel him.

“I’m-“ you gasp a little. He quickens the pace of his hand, and you bend forward, into him, letting out another moan as the sparks shoot up from between your legs.

“Come,” he says. You nod as the sensation continues to build, and your back is arched below him. In a stroke of genius, he bends forward and captures a nipple between his lips. With one more pump of his hand, you’re peaking, clenching around him as you grind your teeth against the sensation. You let out your pathetic, girly breaths as he follows you soon after, pumping hard once, twice, before you can feel him come inside you. With a sigh, he pulls out of you and falls to your side. After a moment of the two of you catching your breath, he reaches out and pulls you to him. You relax against him, your sweaty cheek against his sweaty chest, and let out a small gasp as he presses a kiss to your head.

You both lay there, wrapped up in each other, for ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Thirty. When you finally feel strong enough, you raise your head to look at him, finding him still awake.

“I don’t want you doing that.” You say.

“Doing what?”

“That hero bullshit.” You say. “Sacrificing yourself. Not when there’s a chance.”

He shifts underneath you. “If it keeps you safe-”

“No.” You say. “Promise me. Promise me if there’s even a small chance, you’ll let me help. You’ll call me”

“I-”

“I’m serious,” you say, and you can feel your eyes begin to prick with tears. Oh god, not now. You reach up and wipe at your eyes.

“Anta-” he reaches out as if he’s going to stroke your cheek. You shake your head.

“Promise,” 

His face relaxes. Maybe he can see how serious you are. Maybe he can already guess why.

Not tonight. You can’t talk tonight. Maybe he feels that too.

“…Okay,” he says finally. You look up at him, almost in shock.

“Okay?” you repeat.

He nods. You feel his hand on the back of your head, gently pushing you back down against his chest. “Okay.”

You let out a shaky breath. Screwing your eyes shut, you reach up around his waist and pull him close to you, clutching at him like he’s going to fly away.

“Okay.” you say finally. 

It’s been an hour and half since they last slept together, and here’s what he’s complied about her:

She likes to sing. She’s not good at it, but she likes it. She hums when she works and sometimes when she’s in the shower. She makes good caf, almost offensively good, as if it’s a comment on his own inability. She sleeps on her side with her hand outstretched, always touching him. She likes the metallic smell of ship oil, and often doesn’t notice if she has it smeared on her face or clothes, she’s so focused on working. She pretends to be asleep so he’ll play with her hair, which he’s happy to do. She cannot hold her liquor. She's scared she's going to scare him away. She has a habit of periodically tying her hair up only to then pull it out of its hold minutes later. She has a patch of moles on her shoulder that looks like the first constellation his father taught him, the one he always sees first when he looks up to the sky. She trusts him, and maker, isn’t that a kicker- she really trusts him. She’s surprisingly good with a blaster. She has long, soft fingers that make him feel cared for whenever they glide up his face and into his hair. She’s good at math. She’s good at giving head. She’s bad at flying and taking orders. She chews at her lip when she’s thinking. She wants to know him, but she’s holding back for his sake. She’s strong and smart and stubborn and brave and she somehow always finds and eats half of whatever sweet he’s hidden away. She’s from the planet Blirk. Her favorite color is green. Her name is Antares.

Also, he's in love with her. 


	9. Midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines Day. Here's some angst (a lot of angst, actually, sorry), filth, and fluff

When it comes, it usually comes at night.

You had been doing good. You’d kept yourself busy, kept yourself laughing, found the right distractions. You hadn’t been lying- you _were_ good at repressing your feelings. But what’s that thing they say about grief? It’s like a room with a button on the wall, and there’s a ball bouncing around. Some days the ball is big, some days it’s small, but it’s always there. It’s not if the button will get pushed, but when.

When turns out to be now.

And, god, you wish it wasn’t. Not when you fell asleep like this, pressed up against him in your little pile of blankets as the ship hums around you. Not when his arm’s around your waist and his nose is in your neck. Not when you’ve been doing so, _so_ good.

But it’s there. Like a sewing pin pressing through your sternum- sharp and acute. You let out a shaky breath and run the mental checklist. How bad will it be this time? How long? It’s come for minutes before, other times for days. You shake your head at the thought. Doesn’t matter now. It’s here. Moving on.

Can you hide it? Before, when you were on your own and these spells overtook you, you could sometimes continue about your day, shoving everything down until you had a moment to yourself to sit with it, let it use your body however it wanted. Sometimes though…rarer now, but around the time…you wouldn’t move for days. You’d lost business to it. You’d lost employment, those first years. But you couldn’t pull yourself out from under the boulder. The only thing more suffocating than laying with it was to try and wrestle it off. You imagine a beam scanning your body head to toe, monitoring yourself for any changes. Your eyes are itchy. Your heart rate is speeding up, as if it’ll run off on its own if you don’t do something now, immediately, why aren’t you moving-

Beside you, he stirs. For a moment you think he just sensed it and woke up. You squeeze your eyes shut, expecting to feel him staring at you any moment, but he only turns, sliding onto his stomach. You wait for a sign he’s really awake and just testing you, but you hear the muffled snore from his pillow and realize you’re in the clear.

Carefully, you lift his arm off your waist and scoot away. Once you’re out of his reach, you gently drop the arm down on your empty space. He barely flinches, which surprises you – usually, he’s the much more light sleeper, waking up even when you roll out of bed to piss in the middle of the night. Then you remember you’d filled him with enough bacta to regrow an organ.

You pad over to the ladder leading to the cockpit, and, even knowing he’s probably too wiped out, you try and keep the volume down as you open the hatch and crawl through. Gently, you place it back in place, closing you in alone as the galaxy warps around you.

Crawling on your hands and knees you make for the pilot's chair, pulling yourself onto the seat like a pathetic dog. Once your back is against the rest, you pull your knees to your chest and hug them as physically close to yourself as you can, until it hurts.

Then, and only then, do you bury your face in your knees and choke out a sob. 

“Come on, just a little bit further.”

“I’m not doing this.”

You drum your fingers along the mug, waiting.

He sighs before taking another step forward, which you match in turn with a step back. He sets his jaw.

“Will you stop moving?”

Suppressing a smile, you hold the caf out.

“How else will you relearn to walk?”

“ _I can walk_ ,” he takes another long stride towards you and you step back again, just enough to be out of his reach. The fists around his sides twitch in frustration as you lift up the mug to take a sip. You make a show of wiping your mouth of any excess.

“Mmmmmm.” You exaggerate.

Fed up with this, he suddenly picks up the pace, making to cage you against the wall.

“Hey-Stop! This caf is hot-!” you try to scramble away in time but he’s on you before you can take a step. He plucks the mug from your hand and holds it up to his mouth, taking long purposeful gulps before finishing it, all the while holding eye contact. When he’s done, he flips it upside down before putting it back in your hand.

“I can walk.” He reasserts.

“I see,” you look down into the empty mug. “But what about your reflexes?” you toss the cup in the air without warning. Like it’s nothing, he keeps his eyes on you as he catches it just as it arcs down, the slap of his palm against the metal making you blush a bit. He brings his hand down between you and presents it.

“You’re sexy when you’re showing off. It’s annoying,” you grumble, snatching the mug from his hand. He sighs and lifts his hand up rests against the wall near your head. You smile, despite yourself.

“You catch a few mugs and now you think you can stand like you’re trying to hit on me in a cantina?”

“ ‘Trying’,” he rolls his eyes. You’re scanning your brain for a comeback when he drops his face to yours and kisses you, and its embarrassing how quickly that little intimacy kills your show of resistance. Easily- perhaps too eagerly- you lean into it, sucking his top lip as you press yourself up against him. You feel him smile against your lips before pulling away.

“Am I clear for service, then?” he asks playfully – playfully!-as he runs a finger down your jaw.

You purse your lips. “It’s only been a few days-”

“A few days of drug-induced healing sleep under careful watch.”

You look down at his leg. “It was deep.”

“And now there’s barely a scar.”

‘Barely’.

The liar.

The still healing wound is about three inches long with a noticeable divot into the meat of his thigh. When he finally let you replace the bandages after he woke up that first morning, you had to bite the inside of your cheek to not get sick. The adrenaline that had propelled you into nursing before was gone, replaced by worry and dread. He offered to take over at one point, but you swatted his hand away. Part of you needed to know something about this felt under your control. When you had finished, you felt him studying your profile as you packed up the kit.

“You’re good with a blaster,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” you remember you stood up quickly. “you find a hobby at a moisture farm.”

“Is that…” he paused long enough that you to look up at him. “…what your family did?”

For a second, you worry he did hear you last night, somehow, through the medicinal daze. Simultaneously, you wonder why every significant milestone in this relationship’s intimacy has been kickstarted by him just having wildly good hearing.

But after you see how he looks waiting for you to answer, you realize it’s not that at all.

He’s trying.

In that clumsy, awkward way of someone testing the emotional capacity of a new relationship – scared of making themselves a fool, but with just a bit of hopeful confidence that _maybe_ it’ll work just like you want it to. Of someone who isn’t used to this sort of thing, maybe, and it makes them uncomfortable, but they know they have to attempt it if they want to keep things going.

“Yeah,” a smile flickered across your face before you remembered your task. You dropped the kit off in the nook and picked up your tool belt. Once you were on the ground on some lonely little dust planet, you had inspected the outside and found your flying was not as miraculous and graceful as you had thought, and the new shields could only do so much against intentionally crashing into three vehicles at a high speed.

You turned back to him as you looped it around your waist. “Shot the house once.”

“I believe it.” he said. “You have a thing for property damage.”

“Yeah, well, see? You’re not my first.”

“I gathered that after the first time.”

It took you a second, but when you got it you threw one of your oil rags at his face. He chuckled, swiping it out of the air.

“You and countless other men should get down on their knees and thank Kryle Kersan for his ‘shooting lessons’,” you half-mockingly chided him. “ _You’ve_ certainly enjoyed the fruits of his tutelage.” Said as you did a gratuitously vulgar mime to remind him as to which specific ‘fruit’ you were referring.

“I’ll send him a message,” he said. “Where’s he live and what’s his Identification Number?”

You know he means it as a joke- haha, let me go hunt down your ex- and you like seeing him experiment with this side of himself. He seems brighter like this.

“He…ah,” You run through a joke you can make or a funny lie you could tell, but – “he died. The day I left.”

His face falls, and you want to kick yourself. He was _trying._ He took a leap of faith and he was fucking trying. And you couldn’t just lie for him.

“I’m…sorry.”

“Don’t be!” you say too eagerly. You desperately search for something to say that could alleviate the tension. Make him feel better. “Really,” you try smiling. “Most people I knew died!”

WHAT THE FUCK.

Your face fell as your eyes bugged out. You both stood there for a beat, unsure of, at the very least, what exactly the tone of this conversation was anymore. Just as you felt he was about to speak, you spoke up.

“I should,” you pointed over your shoulder. “The wing’s all…fucked…” you nodded as if answering for him and turned to open the hull, drowning out whatever response he may have had.

You had spent most of that first day outside as he slept through another bacta treatment. You _were_ going to fix the wing. But everything in your head felt jumbled, and every time you picked up a tool the number of steps that lay before you seemed so daunting and overwhelmingly time-consuming that you stood, frozen staring ahead of you. Equations and measurements and procedures were interrupted by thoughts of home, of ‘shooting lessons’ and summer season, and everything that was gone now. After an hour and a half had passed and you still hadn’t managed anything, you sat under the wing and let out some long, shaky breaths. You pulled at your hair, trying to redirect yourself -no, no, we did this last night, we’re done – but whenever you stood to work your stomach lurched at another bombardment, and you’d end up, inevitably, back on the ground, lost in another spiral.

It didn’t stop after dinner, nor when he passed out early and you sat on the edge of the bed, staring into the impossible whiteness of the wall in front of you like old holos were being projected. The watery feeling in your throat came back. Carefully, stood from the bed and made for the cockpit, holding your breath against a hiccupping sob as you climbed the ladder once again and locked yourself out of earshot once again, telling yourself this was the last night.

And you were good the second day! You had woken up early and made caf and breakfast, you had helped him take his first, careful steps out of bed and into the fresher, and he had even shown you his gratitude by eating you out for thirty minutes after! You left the hull by midday with a fucking _tune_ in your step you were so ready to get out there and fix that wing.

But then you got to the other side of the ship. And you didn’t stop walking. You walked out, carrying your tool bag like a runaway kid until the ship was barely a dot on the horizon. Then you walked some more, listening to Din snore over the comm. Then, you walked back again, and by the time you were closing the hull behind you, it was dark outside. That night, you changed his bandages as he slept through another dosage – it really was helping the leg heal, as much as he probably hated sleeping all day- before you found yourself, only hours later, going back up to your little nest.

And now, it’s the morning of the third day, and this idiot is insisting he can go hunt.

“You’ve certainly flipped quickly from ‘leave me behind to die’ to ‘put me back in the game’,” you cross your arms. “How’s your running?”

He looks as if he wants to call you out on your previous statement but bites his tongue. Instead, he tilts your chin up, having you look at him. “It’s fine. _I’m_ fine.”

You inhale, our shoulders rising to your ears before letting out a dramatic sigh. You shake your head. “Sounds like your mind is made up.” You lean back against the wall. “Let’s hope this time your contact isn’t a piece of shit.”

“They all are,” he drops his hand along your arm before turning and making for the small armory embedded in the wall. You watch as he reaches up and pulls one of the smaller blasters down and turns it over in his hand. He pauses for a moment, then drops his head to his chest with a sigh. He turns back to you. “It’s a quick trip.”

“Yeah,” you nod. Feeling the ache coming again, you make for the tool bag you left on the table, eager to get outside. He catches your wrist before you can grab the strap. You keep your eyes focused down because to look up would mean to cry, and that would just be too pathetic.

_Fuck’s sake. He’s a grown man._

“There shouldn’t be any issues,” he tries to reassure you. You nod again, squeezing your eyes shut before you look back up at him and try a smile.

“Okay.”

He drops your hand and you sling the bag over your shoulder. You stand there for a moment, waiting for the other to speak until you clear your throat.

“See you tonight, then?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Good,” you squeeze his shoulder, trying to lighten the mood. “Play nice.” You say before turning and walking towards the hull’s exit. Behind you, you hear the hiss of his helmet followed by the vibrations of his footsteps as he comes to stand behind you watching the ramp lower. Once he’s far enough away that he can’t see you, you return to the hull and deposit your tools on the floor before dropping your body beside them.

When he comes back, you pretend as if you had just come in to start making dinner. He makes quick work of the quarry before returning. As if still trying to soothe your worry from earlier, he tells you that it was an easy, quick trip. That the guy knew he was coming and didn’t put up a fight. You, in turn, go along with it. You’re lively and you’re doing your best impression of yourself, joking and making faces and saying dumb things to make him roll his eyes. You pretend not to notice the new singe marks on his cape or the telling blaster shot residue on his armor that he tries to keep out of the light as he strips it all off. He tells you that the meeting was a success, and you don’t press the issue any further. There’s something in the air between you. Tense but caring. 

Maybe that’s why, when you finish cleaning and come to find him laid up in the bed, trying his best to look relaxed and not at all like he’s picked up on some electric, tricky feeling in the air, you start taking of your clothes. He watches, his face barely changing as you deposit the articles at your feet with a solemn face. After you shimmy out of your underclothes, you crawl up the bed to him until you’re straddled around his middle, cupping his face in your hand as you pull him into a soft kiss, sucking his bottom lip between yours. He lets you take the lead for a bit, and you run your nails down the front of his chest as you deepen the kiss, trying to disappear into it. When he tries to move you onto your back, but you press your hand to the center of his chest, pushing him back down onto the bed. Slowly, with featherlight touches, you quietly undress him, urging him with small caresses to lift his arms, lift his hips, and let you take care of him. He’s hard by the time you drop his smalls down with yours, and without saying anything you climb back astride him and take him into you. It stings a bit, just like you wanted it to, as you stretch around him. He lets out a small moan as you begin to ride him, keeping your eyes trained on his until it becomes too much. You close your eyes and start going faster, harder, bracing yourself by pressing a palm to the wall in front of you. It feels good, better than you think you deserve, as you bounce yourself on top of him, biting your lip as your body finally betrays you, producing slick that lets him inch deeper into you. You feel his hand snake up to your waist as he lets out a small gasp and it’s too much, how tender it is. It makes you want to go even harder, to make it hurt, to feel physical pain that could match 1/10th of how dark and dismal the inside of your body has felt. You want to get lost in something real and present and now and this feels like the only way to keep yourself grounded in time.

It almost works. You feel the orgasm begin to build. But then you feel him sit up beneath you and pull you closer to him, pressing your body into his. He must have grown bored of being submissive, or maybe he felt you were too far away for his liking, but he begins to fuck up into you, hard strokes that make your teeth grit as you feel yourself getting closer, grinding your clit against his pubic bone. At the last moment before, he grabs your face, the surprise causing your eyes to open. He holds your gaze, a half intimidating, half comforting gesture that tells you he wants you here with him. Your body spasms around his and you let out a pathetic little moan as he finishes quickly after you with a subdued grunt. You both stay for a moment, breathing heavy as you come down from whatever emotional heights you had pulled him up into with you. Gently, he lays you down beside him, and you bury your face in the crook of his neck and shoulder and inhale his smell- sweaty and metallic and masculine and safe. He combs his fingers through the ends of your hair lightly, his fingertips lazily brushing against your back. When you fall asleep, it’s the deepest unconsciousness you’ve felt in weeks.

It doesn’t last, of course.

You wake up with the pit in your stomach. Not even one night of peace. You’re about to plan your exit strategy when you realize, however, something is missing. Sitting up, you turn to see the empty space behind you. You try to listen for sounds coming from the fresher, but the only thing you can hear is the hum of the ship. You crawl towards the end of the bed and find your tunic and underclothes, pulling them on in the dark. You walk, your hands outstretched like you haven’t done this exact same walk for nights.

When you enter the cockpit, you’re not surprised to see him sitting in the pilot’s chair, one leg kicked up to rest his foot on the other knee like he’s been waiting. Lazily he turns the chair to you, watching as you pull yourself up out of the hull and close the latch behind you.

“Should have known better,” you say. “than to think I could keep a secret on this ship.”

He doesn’t answer you but just watches you and you stand and walk over to his side, looking out at the expanse before you. For such a lonely, ugly planet, it is beautiful at night. You sigh and turn, leaning against the control console.

Will it be more questions? You hope not. You’re not ready, but you’re tired, and you know you’ll give him whatever he wants. Maybe that’s what you need right now, just to fall apart. Scatter the pieces of you at his feet and make him realize the real basket case he picked up. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? Especially after you started talking. Especially after you took him to bed. Especially after you couldn’t hide behind your job or your silence or even the name you’ve used for over a decade, ever since you left. That first morning, when you caught each other off guard, was the knife at the bottom of your gut, and it had been slitting you open ever since, leaving you to try and hold your bloody intestines from falling onto the floor.

You hadn’t been this easy for anyone in so long.

Instead of questions, though, he reaches out his hand and takes yours. He rubs his thumb across the knuckles of your forefinger before pulling you, ever so slightly, forward into his lap. You cave, curling into him, careful to keep any pressure off his wound. You let your head fall on his shoulder as he continues to play with your hand in his in the silence of the ship. It’s meditative, and you feel your eyes begin to grow heavy just as he speaks.

“I was thinking,” he says finally. “You were right.”

“About?”

“My leg,” he says. “I could use a few more days rest.”

Liar. Liar. Liar.

“I was thinking…” he trails off. You lift your head from his shoulder to look at him. He’s staring forward, as if careful not to look at you and give the ruse away. “I was thinking we could go somewhere.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he nods.

“Okay,” you say softly. He turns to look at you, and you give him a weak smile. “That sounds nice.”

“Good.” He says. You relax back into your place as he tightens his hold around you.

“Where should we go?” you ask.

He stiffens a bit at the question. You’re about to pull away from him and ask what’s wrong when he begins to trail his fingers along your arm, trying to soothe you into place. He takes a small inhale.

“Do you…” he starts. “Do you still want to meet the kid?”


	10. Circles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my keyboard's fucked so forgive me if I miss a few typos or there are one too many letters. 
> 
> It's Pisces season, which means we want to get railed and cry.

Well, I mean, of course, it doesn’t just go away like that.

Some nights are still bad. Some nights that week you still wake up and slip away to the cockpit, but this time you can feel his eyes on you as you pull yourself up and walk out of the room. You feel his hand tense against your body as you pull away from him, relaxing only a second like he’s reminding himself this might just be something you need. He gets that. He’s always awake when you come back. Minutes, sometimes hours later. He pretends to be asleep when you crawl back in next to him and shuffle yourself back into place, but you’ve gotten good at reading him, too. Even in the dark you can see his jaw set and feel his body relax once you’ve dropped the covers over you both. Neither of you mentions it in the morning.

So, no, it doesn’t just go away. But It gets better because now, there’s something to look forward to.

Something _he_ wants.

So when you go out the morning after that night in the cockpit, you’re not just fixing the ship’s wing, you’re fixing the ship's wing _so he can go see his son_. You’re showering, fixing your hair again, and keeping up with the laundry _so he’s not embarrassed to introduce you to his kid._ Every little task that felt so impossible in those three days is now aided by the fact that, if you just pull through and do this one step, then another, then a fucking nother, you’ll get to see Din happy.

It’s not a perfect system. You’re still working slower than you’d like. And you still lose yourself in memories and ruminations throughout the day, but it helps. It’s the rubber band that snaps you back to attention, out of the darker parts of your mind. _If not for me,_ you think, _for him._

And he’s excited. He tries to hide it, but it’s there every time you bring it up. It’s there when he thinks you’re not watching him, when he’s checking his messages or charting the route and there’s this small but undeniable smile on his face. And even though he’s not much of a talker, he loves talking about him.

“What’s he like?”

“Funny. And smart. And brave, for such a small thing.”

“Whats his favorite food?”

“Pssh. Anything he can get his hands on.”

“How old is he?”

“Fifty, maybe sixty?”

“ _What?_ ”

“His species doesn’t age the same way as us.”

“He’s older than you!”

“I’m older than you.”

“By, like, ten years! _At most!_ ” You weren’t sure. You had asked him about his birthday once, and he couldn’t remember. That led to a prodding series of questions about historical events to try and gauge it, much to his annoyance.

“I assure you, he is very…babylike.”

“Not just a tiny old man running a scam for a floating-place to stay and three hot ones a day?” you make a point to swirl your fork loudly around in the can of beans you’re eating. Standing opposite of you against the counter, digging into his own cold rations, he shakes his head.

“If he is we’re going to have some talks.” He looks up at you, tapping the side of his can. “And you’re the one who broke the re-heater.”

“What should I get him?” you ask, ignoring his completely valid point.

“'Get him’?”

“Yeah, at the market.” You say. “Every kid likes a bribe.”

“You’re going to try and buy his affection?”

You hold up your thumb and forefinger. “Like, a very small amount.”

He smirks before digging in for another bite. “He likes balls. Marbles. Cookies.”

“Like those blue ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Those were his?”

“Yeah.”

You nod. “Kid’s got good taste.” You wink at him. “In food _and_ in dads.”

“You say that until he’s got a frog in his mouth.”

“Because eating frogs is gross or you’re a bad parent if you let your kid suck on one?”

He sends you a look.

“Eating live frogs is delicacies on some planets-” you shake your head.

“-What, like on ‘Tanaritt’?-”

“-I would have thought a Mandalorian would be a little more understanding, is all I’m saying, sensitive to other’s cultures, things that may seem strange-“

“I hired something strange to fix my ship and now I wake up with cold feet between my legs and all my sweets half-eaten.” 

You point your fork at him. “Get better at hiding them.”

“Just buy double at the markets!”

“But then how will I afford the ice socks I wear to bed?” you give him an exaggerated frown as you polish off your last bite.

He shakes his head, deciding to change the subject “I set the coordinates before coming down. With a stop for refueling, we’ll be there within two days if everything’s ready.”

“Finished it off this afternoon.” You place the empty can next to you on the counter. “I’ll have you fly a few rounds in the morning to listen for any oddities, but we should be good.”

“Your work is always solid,” he says as if it’s a fact. It makes your chest swell. You find yourself smiling as you watch him stab the last few beans with his fork, his brow furrowed in concentration. You never would have thought someone could who wore his armor and did what he did could look so boyish underneath it all.

“You excited to see him?” You ask as he plops the last bite in his mouth.

“Yes.” He answers simply. “It’s been too long.”

“How long?”

“Six months and a week,” he answers.

“That’s a long time to be away from someone you love.”

“It’s been…hard. But I’ve managed.” He walks to place the empty can beside yours and stills. You tap him gently with your knee, prompting him to look at you. You grin.

“Two more days,” you say in a sing-song voice, shaking your shoulders. He smirks and moves, coming to stand between your legs. Even after everything that’s happened between you two, it’s still a shock to the system that he’s doing this on his own volition. A hand comes up behind your head and you tilt your face up, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t. He just studies your face.

“Hey,” you say softly.

“Hey.” He says back. His hand trails down the side of your neck. “I like your hair.”

“I like yours,” you quip back. You raise a hand to tug at one of the loose curls that falls across his forehead. “Could use a trim, though.”

He reaches up and catches your wrist, giving the inside a kiss. You smile at the softness of it as he presses the side of his face into your palm. It’s intimate. Almost overwhelmingly so. You’re about to pinch his cheek when his hand comes up to take yours. He brings it down between the two of you like he’s about to read your palm like your mother used to do. He drags one of his fingers over the long scar that bisects from above your thumb and down across.

“Brother and I did a blood oath when we were kids,” you say. “Something we’d read made us think we should.”

A slight smile. “What did you promise?”

“Hmmm, can’t tell you.” You click your tongue. “He said if I told anyone the wound would just burst open, like- BLEH!” you shake your hand, dramatically, as if blood is gushing out, providing the appropriate sound effects. He cages your convulsing hand between his.

“You are a strange thing,” he says softly.

“Yeah, thanks, you’ve only said it twice-“

“No, what I mean is you’re such a…rare…and good thing. To have found in all of this.” He meets your gaze and the sincerity there catches you off guard. “I hope you know that.”

It’s too much, how you can feel him seeing you. You smile and look at your lap. “War-weary smart asses are about a dime a dozen, I think you’ve been going to the wrong bars.”

“Not ones like you.”

You look up at him quickly and let out a small laugh, a bit unsure of how to go from here. You know how _you_ feel- your stomach is fluttering and there’s the giddy, expansive feeling in your chest. He’s never been verbally affectionate, and something about hearing him say these things aloud is turning you into a stupid, dizzy girl.

“You’re…ah…making me blush,” you push some hair behind your ears.

“You’re pretty when you blush.” He says. His hand comes to your throat, his fingers trailing down to the v where a button holds your shirt together. His forefinger and thumb begin to unfasten it. “Especially when you cum.”

You let out a small squeak as his hands drop to the next button, popping it open just as easily. He slides a hand into your shirt and under your bands, fondling a breast. His hands are warm and rough and you let out a small, quivering breath when he tweaks a nipple.

“Is this mine?” he asks, plucking at the tunic. You’re brought back into your body for a moment.

“I think so,” you lie. It is. It’s absolutely his. You haven’t done laundry in a week. You stole it this morning but hoped he wouldn’t notice.

Without a warning he rips the rest of the shirt down, sending buttons bouncing off the floor. You feel hands tug you off the counter and you plop onto your feet with a small gasp.

“Take this-” he tugs at the shoulder and you get the message, shimmying out of the garment and dropping it on the floor beside you as he undoes the front clasp of your bands and lets it fall. The cold shock of the room against your skin is replaced by warm hands as his thumbs brush across your nipples. You strive upwards for a kiss but he pulls away, a stupid, devious smile breaking out when he sees the frustration on your face. Frowning, you bring your hand up and catch his face, pulling it towards you to capture him in a searing, messy kiss. You run the tip of your tongue along the underside of his top lip before giving it a quick bite. Maybe harder than necessary, because he growls under your mouth and you can feel his grip on your arms tighten. He breaks away.

“Is that how you want it?” he asks in a hurried voice. He flexes his grip on you as if you underscore what _it_ means.

“If your injury and age will allow it,” you breathe, leaning forward to catch his lips again. “Don’t want you to break anything before you see your kid -ah!” he grabs a handful of that hair he likes so much and jerks your head back.

“I know what you’re doing,” he growls. “Is this why you wind me up all the time?”

You bite your lip.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” He says as if he’s not got you bent back and baring your neck.

“ _I_ want you to hurt me.” you laugh. “I’ll tell you if it’s too much.”

He holds for a second, his eyes flicking down from your face to your chest as if he’s scanning for some resistance.

“Get on your knees,” he says.

Almost too eager, you drop down when he lets your hair go. You begin pulling at the front of his trousers and the laces give way easily. You lick your hand before wrapping it around him. He lets out a small sigh as you begin to pump slowly, twisting your wrist slightly and you move up and down. You lean forward and take the head between your lips, flicking your tongue across it before taking the rest of him in. You hear a groan above you as you pull back, trailing the tip of your tongue along the base as your hand follows the wet trail. You look up at him with the biggest eyes you can muster as you pop him out of your mouth and lap a broad stroke under the head before taking him back in.

The grip on the back of your head tightens as you continue, the occasional groan coming from above you whenever you take him deep into your throat and hum. You fall into an easy rhythm, letting him control the speed as you bob back and forth on your knees, sucking and licking and pumping him. Without warning, he’s pulled your head back and off and you feel yourself being summoned up to stand again. You get back on your legs in time to feel his hand drop from your hair and go to your hips, turning you around until your stomach is pressed against the counter’s edge. The same hand tugs your trousers and underclothes down in one swoop. You have enough time to step out of one of the leg holes when you feel his hand nudge your thighs farther apart, bending you over. A hand appears in front of your face.

“Spit.”

You follow the order and spit into his palm. The hand pulls back and over you and you hear him drop his own trousers down the rest of his legs as he begins to palm himself behind you. You start to look over your shoulder but a sharp smack on your ass jolts you forward further. You’ve barely had enough time to register that he’s _spanked_ you and you maybe kind of liked it when you feel him pressing against your entrance. With enough ease but just enough resistance to make it sting so good, he pushes himself into you, pressing your front against the counter as he fills you up, burying himself inside you. When he reaches his limit he stills for a moment to remove his shirt but is grabbing you by your hair once again, pulling your chest off the counter as your back arches. You reach to hold the counter’s edge as he pulls out of you slowly, dragging himself along your walls before he’s thrusting back into you, hard enough the front of your thighs bang against the counter with an audible thump. You let out a little cry and he does it again, then again, readjusting the grip on your hair as he sets a brutal, angry pace that makes you forget both of your names. He brings another hand down on your ass, another loud smack filling the room before it snakes forward to grab a breast. You close your eyes and you can feel him repeatedly dragging his hardness up against that aching, sensitive space deep inside you as he ruts you into the counter.

“Do you like this?” he asks, his voice strained.

“ _Yes_ ,” you sigh. A fingernail scratches against your nipple and you let out a whine.

“Me too,”

You let out a sharp moan as he slowly strokes up a few times before resetting to his fast, primal place, the hand squeezing your breast tightening, pinching the nipple hard as you hear his breaths become shallower. With another stroke against _there,_ you bring a fist down on the counter and bite your lower lip. It’s building, and it’s a different sensation than usual. This feels deep, and internal, like a sound wave’s ripples from under the water. You press yourself against him, your bodies meeting with a deep slap as you begin to fuck yourself back onto him, whining at the wet, hard feeling of it. The feeling is getting heavier, the gravity of it sucking you in as he presses down on your back, flattening your front against the counter. You open your eyes and - oh god you need to clean the stove – wait!! No!! we’re getting fucked right now!! – you close your eyes and reach back, raking your nails down his forearm and he keeps going, the hardness of him filling you up in such an aching, pleasurable way. You press yourself against him again, wanting to take all of him, as much as you can, inside of you. As if punishment, he brings another smack down on your ass, propelling you forward with the shock.

Your panting and breathy and the noises coming from your crotch are almost as obscene as the words you can just barely make out over the slapping sounds filling the air and your own, thickening daze – “tight”, “wet”, “fuck”, “so good”, “so pretty” – you reach out and claw the space in front of you. The thrusts are fast, and your mouth falls into an ‘o’ as the friction of him inside of you and the rapid, repeated thrusts finally break together and your body clamps down around him in violent waves. You let out a cry as you ride it out, feeling with each spasm how full you are. He follows soon after and you know his fingers are leaving bruises as he squeezes your sides as you feel him throb inside of you, pressing forward with a whine, trying to bury himself to the hilt. It’s almost enough to make you cum again, the feeling and sound of him falling so shamelessly apart.

The two of you stay like that for a minute, sweating and panting. After a moment he steps away, pulling himself out of you and you’re about to complain from the emptiness when you’re being twisted around once again and feel the press of his lips against yours. You open your mouth to him and let your arms fall around his shoulders, pressing yourself against him as he pulls you tighter, tighter, you think than you’ve ever been held. Like he’s afraid you’ll drift away. After a minute of heady kissing you, you feel a hand come up and catch your face, pulling you back to look at him. You try to control your breathing and you hold his eye contact, and it’s a rush, every time he makes you look at him. You wonder if this, right now, is how he feels without his helmet on all the time. Just so open and unbearably _seen_ without anywhere to hide. You swallow under his gaze and wait for him to speak.

“Go lay on the bed,” he orders.

You give a nod that’s a bit too enthusiastic for a woman who will be covered in bruises tomorrow.

“Yes, boss.”

And no, it doesn’t go away with sex, either.

Not even the really good sex, which seems unfair. The kind of sex you’ve just had twice, where your entire body seems alive and full of light, enough light, you’d think, to illuminate every dark corner inside of you. Your body is exhausted and isn’t that supposed to help? You’re warm and so pleasantly battered, the soreness between your legs already beginning to ache, and all you want is to lay here next to the artist responsible and bask just in how lucky you got. And, for a while, you do. You lay in a tangled, content mess for what feels like hours, the only light coming in through the small, narrow window above the bed. Your entire body feels like starlight and sleep and like you could just dissolve into nothing and you’d be happy.

But it doesn’t work that way. If only it did.

So when it comes later, because of course, it comes, you feel the itching sensation to pull away and go hide yourself, like you had been for a week. And it’s pathetic – he didn’t need a week to get the ship ready, he gave it to you to pull yourself together because he has been watching you fall apart each night and fuck his ship up in the process. The thought makes you want to cry. He can see through you. He sees how much you’re fraying at the seams and gave you time to pull yourself back in. But can’t he see you’re trying? You’ve been trying so fucking hard. You want to see his face when he sees his kid. It what gets you out of bed and into the repairs. Doesn’t that count for anything?

No. Not when there aren’t any results. Not when he could do better.

You begin to pull away from him, only this time, instead of relaxing his hand around you and letting you slip out, it catches you. You look up to see his open eyes staring back down at yours. Your eyes are stinging and you feel so small and helpless and pathetic underneath it. Now he’s seeing you, really seeing you, without all the jokes and the silence and the sex, and what do you think he’s seeing?

“You don’t have to go,” he says finally.

A tear slips down your cheek and you raise a hand to wipe it away, quickly, as if maybe if you’re fast enough he won’t see it. “What?”

“I just…you don’t have to be alone.” He says.

You hold your breath, waiting for him to say something more. To ask a question or to demand answers in exchange for this. But he doesn’t. He just watches you, sleepily, as you hold yourself taut and unsure of what to do. You don’t want him to see you this way. It’s too messy and personal and it will only scare him off.

But then that small, stupid, hopeful voice makes you think…maybe.

Maybe he really isn’t scared of you like this. Maybe he’s not even annoyed. Maybe this is what people do for each other, and it’s not out of obligation or pity but a deep understanding. The gnawing need to take care of a person you care about lest your heart explodes. It’s how you felt when he was in the hull, his leg bleeding out onto you. It’s how you felt when you saw your brother’s hand angry and bloody and crimson all those years ago. It’s how you felt when you left.

So, daring yourself, you relax back into bed. A hand comes up around you and presses against your back, pulling you up and against him. His face buries in the top of your hair and he begins to lazily draw little circles between your shoulder blades.

“That feels nice,” you say weakly, another tear slipping through. You know he can feel it against his chest, but he says nothing.

“Good.” He says, his other arm pulling you tighter. You let out a sigh and let your body drop into him, another small sob escaping your chest.

He keeps spinning circles on your back, even after you fall back asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this smut too tame? Because I read some other fics then look at mine and feel like a nun. And not even a nun whose chapel has one of those statues of ripped Jesus in the loincloth.


	11. Rare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the plot you ordered.

Of course, he knows why she goes away at night.

A person doesn't survive long enough in this galaxy, doing what he does, without being good at reading people. It's what has saved his life- the tell on someone's face before they're confident enough to think they can outshoot him, the slump of a mark's shoulders that tells him they're tired of running, the smugness of a crime boss who doesn't think Din knows there's already at least three guns who've had their sights on him as soon as he walked through the door. He's good at this. 

So, while she's tried to keep her cards close to her chest, she hasn't been as careful with the tremble that runs through her hands. He recognizes it because sometimes he still has to clench his own fists to his sides to keep them from shaking. When he was on his own, before her, before the kid, he would wake in the middle of the night, sweating and crying out for ghosts. Like he was a child again. Something about having someone to protect seemed to help, made him feel strong enough to keep the memories at bay, but he went to bed every night knowing that it could come back. Not a lot scared him, but the thought of seeing her over him again, her big grey eyes blown out with worry, so afraid seeing him so helpless and so unsure of how to help- yeah. That scared the hell out of him.

Could she sense that? Or was she too focused on trying to keep herself hidden that she couldn't see their complimentary, jagged edges? Funny how someone so smart could be so afraid of scaring off someone with the same scars. Self-hatred has a tendency to make one self-involved. He should know. 

So why was last night too much, all of the sudden? He had let her go before. He knew the safety that comes from closing yourself off somewhere dark and still. But his hand tightened around her all the same, and when she asked, he told her the truth. She didn't need to be alone. What he didn't say, what he should have said, what he could have told her as she eased back down into the bed, like a stray taking their first steps into their new home, is that they were the same. That some nights he would lay awake beside her, haunted by his own memories, and the only thing that kept his body on the bed was that slim and stubborn hand that always reached out and touched him as she slept. That in the weeks after the kid left, he was so sick with worry and regret he could barely sleep. That the first time he got any real rest in months was that first night when he heard her faint snores through the wall, reminding him there was another life on board, someone who was trusting him to keep her safe. That she was the only person he had consistently had in his bed, and even with the cold feet and the snoring and the pretty aggressive blanket hogging, he never wanted to sleep alone again. That him keeping her there, holding her against his chest as she cried, was the least he could do to repay her for everything she had done for him by just existing around him.

He didn’t say any of that, though.

She’s not the only one afraid of scaring someone off.

“I think this is our first fight.” you tell him in the morning.

He looks at you like a dog you just kicked. “What?”

You swivel your mug. “You made the oily stuff again.”

Across from you he visably relaxes, his shoulders dropping down before giving you a frown. He turns his attention back to cleaning his guns “I thought you were being serious.”

It’s morning and you’re sat on the ramp watching the second sun rise as he works behind you, sat on crate as you lean against the hull’s frame, one leg outstretched on the ramp.

“I am serious. We have to renegotiate my contract now.” You take a sip despite yourself and make a face at the bitter taste. “Oh maker. Yeah.” You push the mug away from you. “Going to need a _lot_ more oral sex if I’m expected to put up with these working conditions.”

“If that’s a threat, your negotiating tactics could use some work.” he holds one of the many guns at his feet up to the morning light.

“Yeah, well,” you stand and stretch, causing him to finally look up and away from his project to watch your shirt ride up. “I’m a team player.”

“That so?” he quips. You give him a look before dropping your hands down to your sides and making your way to stand in front of him. You pluck the gun out of his hands and bring it up to inspect yourself. You feel his hands come to rest on your hips as you close one eye and stare down the scope.

“You planning on storming the compound?” you ask. He raises an eyebrow before you gesture to your feet. “You’ve cleaned about a third of your armory.”

“I’m just being thorough,” he pinches the side of your trousers. “These look nice.”

“You’re stalling,” you make sure the safety on the blaster is on before handing it to him, handle first. “Nervous?”

He takes the blaster from your hand and place it on the ground. “I’m not stalling. I just want to make sure everything’s ready. Just in case.”

“What, in case he’s being bullied by an _entire_ village for lunch credits?” you point down at one weapon in particular. “ _That_ is a grenade launcher, Din.”

He pushes the item away with his foot like a teenager kicking dirty pictures under a bed. You give him a half smile before bringing your hand to the side of his head, running your fingers down through the hair to caress the nape of his neck.

“He’s going to be happy to see you.” You say.

He doesn’t say anything, but keeps his eyes averted. You run your fingers up to his chin and tilt, having him meet your eyes.

“He is.” You reiterate. He clenches his jaw for a moment.

“What if he thinks I forgot about him?” he asks after a beat.

“He doesn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we’ve been talking about you behind your back over our super-secret best friend comm channel.” You shake your head. “ _Because_ , you idiot, you’re his dad. And from what you told me it sounds like he knew what he was doing when he did the whole…” You wave your hand in the air. “Summoning thing.”

He frowns, but nods. Rolling your eyes, you drop down into a squat to be on the same level.

“You’re nervous because you love him and you’ve missed him and those feelings have a way of turning us all into irrational idiots. Even those of us who can literally sit atop piles of our guns.” You push his shoulder playfully. “You know what’s gonna happen? You’re going to get there and walk down this ramp all scared, and the moment he sees you he’s going to fucking force throw some poor kid into the sun out of the way so he can run right up to you and give you a hug. I’ll bet my first _and_ second month’s salary on it- which is a pretty safe bet for you, because you still have both.”

You hold his gaze for a moment waiting for another nod. Instead, he reaches up to take your chin and pulls you in for a kiss. It’s soft and his lips are chapped, but it makes you feel giddy and warm all the same. When he pulls away, he has a small smile on his face.

“I want that comm channel.” He says.

“Sure thing. It’s channel 15 and the passcode is ‘din smells’.” You reach forward and begin to collect the guns at his feet and you can feel him roll his eyes. “Now get up. I still need you to do a trial flight before we take off.” You stand and make for the armory across the hull. If you’re not mistaken, you hear him sniff his cape behind you.

The first day’s travel is boring enough. After the two of you pack up and do a few practice lift-offs, you’re satisfied the latest repair is going to hold and you finally leave the surface. The first few hours require manual piloting, so you sit up in the cockpit with your feet kicked up, trying to casually discover everything you can about the man beside you. Your giddy curiosity for him was persistent and despite trying to conceal it, you knew your excitement to finally be hearing answers was slipping through.

There seemed to be an unspoken rule that neither of you asked about the other’s childhoods. All questions and answers concerned the present or the past ten years at most. Sometimes, if you could get away with a few details, you would drop in a few that wouldn’t encourage further questioning. He seemed to understand that- if anything, it was you interviewing him with him cautiously prodding you back. He wasn’t used to people asking about him and he never needed nor really wanted to get to know someone just because. The comradery was formed through action and a shared goal, with whatever you learn about another person slipping through the cracks in a plan or arising from uncomfortable small talk, usually with someone who needs to fill the space with noise. Just being asked something for the sake of knowing another person felt frivolous, but you could see, just a bit, that he was enjoying it.

"How many languages do you speak?"

"Five."

"Holy shit, really?"

He shrugs. "You pick them up."

"Best kind job to get?"

"Old people. They never want to run and they come along willingly."

“What do you do for fun?”

“What?”

“Fun. When you have free time.”

“I don’t have free time.”

“Bullshit.”

“I work. I get paid. That’s it.”

“Oh, so how much do I owe you for yesterday on the counter, then?”

He flicks his eyes to the side. There’s the faintest blush on his cheek.

“Oh my gods, is that why I haven’t been getting paid? Because I’ve been spending it all on a live-in comfort boy?” you nudge his knee with your foot.

“Sex with you isn’t work.”

You kiss your teeth. “I don’t know. You get a very determined look on your face sometimes. Full concentration. Makes a girl feel special.”

He turns to look at you. You point.

“Yes! Like that!”

“It’s not work. It’s-” he pauses. You lean in a bit in exaggeration, waiting for him to say something. He sighs. He’s not in the habit of admitting these kind of things. “Being with you is my fun.”

“Yeah it is,” you send him a wink. He shakes his head.

“No, not just that,” he says. “Just…being around you. Talking. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a while.”

The jokey demeanor on your face drains, replaced by a look of surprise and warmth. You feel a blush spread across your cheeks and its suddenly too much to hold his eye contact, and you look to your lap, a dumb smile spread across your face like you’re a kid again.

“I…ah,” you laugh, shaking your head. “For someone who doesn’t talk a lot, when you do, it’s…” you feel brave enough to look back up at him. He’s watching you with those big, deep brown eyes and a small smile and suddenly you feel more secure than you have in years, enough to push you through the rest of this sentence. “You’re the first person I’ve met in a long time who can make me feel this giddy and stupid, you know that?” He doesn’t say anything, he just keeps looking at you, a spotlight. You nod to yourself. “You’re my fun, too.”

You let this mutual admission hang in the air a while, the space around the two of you buzzing with the kind of energy that sticks to new lovers like a fog, keeping them high and everyone else around them repulsed. After a moment you laugh, your best defense against being so vulnerable and so obviously happy.

“Is it, ah, warm in here?” you fan yourself a bit. He smiles, turning his attention back to the control panel and tapping a few buttons. The screen in front of you blinks alive with big, green letters: AUTOPILOT ENGAGED.

If it’s possible, your face grows hotter. Your eyes flick to meet his as he rises and comes to stand in front of you. He holds his hand out, and, annoyingly, you giggle again.

“You trying to have ‘fun’ now?” you ask.

“Yes. I think there’s a Sabaac set in our room.”

_Our room._

“Yeah? It on the bed?”

He shrugs. “Or against the wall.”

All the blood leaves your brain.

You reach up and put your hand in his. “Lead the way.”

When you arrive at the port a few hours later to refuel, you’re almost too tired to leave the ship. It turns out the Sabaac set wasn’t just on the bed, but also against the wall and in the fresher and had some pieces that had scattered in the hull. It’s a very expansive and thorough game, it turns out.

But when you peer out from the cockpit as he lands, your energy snaps back. You had been picturing a dusty little stop in the middle of nowhere, maybe a small market, but looking out now you wouldn’t have been surprised to learn it was a capital city. The port is massive, and as you slowly descend you assume there must be at least eighty ships in the port alone, all going about repairs, refuels, and launches. Further, canopies of red tent tops cover the streets with bright, orange lanterns strung between them, hundreds of people teeming around the two centers like ants. Before he’s even powered down the ship you’re in the hull, pulling on your boots and waiting by the door. He descends a few minutes later, all covered up in his uniform, you dance from foot to foot.

“ _Do you need to use the fresher?”_

You send him a choice hand gesture, but not without a smile. “It’s been a while since we’ve been in a city.”

He opens the armory and pulls out the blaster he was cleaning earlier, depositing it on his hip. When he looks up, you take it as confirmation to begin pawing the code into the door. As soon as it lifts away and begins to descend, you can hear the cacophony of dozens of languages and the industrial sounds of the port. The smell of roasted meat, hot metal, and sea air waft through, and you practically run down the ramp you’re so ready to throw yourself into it all.

He makes quick chat with the first worker to approach, asking for a standard refuel. When he’s finished, he comes up behind where you’re leaning against one of the workmen’s tables, watching the scene in front of you.

“You know, the mechanic should handle that kind of stuff,” he says. You bap him on the shoulder.

“I trust you. Look-” you point up just as across from you at the market’s entrance a group of children light a string of firecrackers. They squeal when the first one pops, their various legs and tentacles kicking up in fear and glee with each bright spark. “I should get some of those.”

“ _No._ ”

“Afraid that it’ll make him like me more than you?”

“ _Yes, actually.”_ He brings his wrist up to his face and flicks the panel on the side of his armguards open. A moment later you feel a buzz from the holo pad in your bag.

_“That’s first and second month’s pay.”_ He says, dropping his arm back down. You smile, watching as the sparks across the street reflected off his helmet. “ _Try not to spend it all on firecrackers.”_

“You’ll have to pry them from my hands.” With that, you reach out and nudge him arm, ushering him to walk forward with you. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.”

Refueling a ship the size of yours only takes about thirty minutes, maybe forty-five on a busy day, and you try to keep that in mind as you linger at nearly every stall you can find, but after a week of the desert sand and no stimulation beyond counting rocks and fucking your shipmate, your attention is easily held by everything from tables piled high with rich textiles to fried lizards on a stick. You take the longest at an impromptu toyshop, testing the bouncability of various rubber balls before Din kindly tells you his kid prefers the solid, metal ones. You end up buying a big sack of marbles of varying sizes, all with different glittery, mini-universes inside of them, after confirming no less than three times that the kid won’t try to eat his gift. In addition, you pick up fresh bread, some expensive smelling ground caf, and a variety box of pastries from a nice four-eyed woman. By the time you come to end of the route, heading back to the dock, you’ve got a bag of small fireworks on your arm and a stick lizard in your mouth.

“ _Did you get everything?”_ he deadpans.

You bite one of the crunchy legs off the lizard before pointing at him with the stick. “Not yet. There are some clothing stalls up here. I need to get you a new tunic.”

_“What?”_

“For the one you ripped off me.” you try.

“ _You don’t have to worry about that.”_

“There’s ah…underwear, too. I wanted to look at, too.” You confess. Why are you embarrassed by that? An hour ago he had you bent into a position you didn’t even think you could draw, but suddenly the idea of telling him you were thinking of buying nice underclothes was too sexy.

“ _Oh._ ” He says from beside you. “ _Uh, yeah. You could…do that._ ” You bite the inside of your cheek and wonder if his face is as warm as yours is. You didn’t come onto the ship with anything really nice – its not like you were planning what was going to happen- and you had been thinking it would be nice if he could see you cleaned up for once. At the very least, it would be a mood boost to have something besides breast bands and your collection of boyish underwear. Something to make you feel pretty. You wanted to be pretty for him.

As you approach the row of stalls and tents, he tugs at your arm. “ _I need to go check the ship. Are you alright here?”_ You nod, patting the top of his hand.

“ _Stay here. I’ll be back soon._ ” He reaches out at takes the bags from your hands. You stand there for a moment and watch him as he makes his way to the port, carrying a bag of bread and toys like such a _dad._ It makes you smile, seeing the contrast of the uniform to the domesticity. You wonder if he could still pull his gun just as quickly.

Probably.

You turn your attention to the clothes and begin to sort through them. You find a basic but soft tunic to replace the one he had ripped off you, if only so you have something else you can sleep in. Underneath a pile of scarves, you find a basic, green dress that roughly looks like your size. It’s about knee length and it reminds you of summer, so you throw it on your pile, thinking it might be nice to wear something other than a work jumpsuit to meet the kid. At the next stall, you pick through the selection of lacey underthings as the older woman watches, offering words of encouragement and advice whenever you hold one piece up to the light. You eventually buy a two-piece set, which she folds into pink crepe paper.

You’re about to just wait by the exit for Din to return, content to be lost in your thoughts when you see it. It’s such a small stall, and maybe if he had come back sooner you wouldn’t have even registered it. But now, standing across the alley with your back against a collapsing old wall, you see it illuminated under the lanterns, and your throat goes dry.

The man behind the counter – a pale, scaly man of an unknown species – notices you staring. He holds out his hand and beckons you forward.

“You look like a woman of good taste!” he calls out. You remain frozen, dumbstruck against the wall. “Surely a pretty girl likes jewelry?”

Not wanting to believe what you’re seeing, and thinking maybe it’s all just a trick of the light, you begin to walk forward. The other two patrons at his stall – a younger woman and another, older man – are bent over two cases to either side of you, focused on the collections below the glass.

“Rarities, too, if you collect. Worn by royalty, this one was, and this – this is a fine silver from Navarro-”

His lying voice tunes out at you stare at the necklace underneath the glass. Beside it, a pair of earrings dangle under a small fluorescent light. There’s a broach in the shape of two moons facing the other below it. Further down, a jewelry box made of clay and desert stones.

And the ring.

“Where did you get these,” you hear yourself say.

“Ha, well, this one was from the Garden palace at Naboo,” he points to the necklace. “Belonged to one of the late Princess’s aunts, you see, a very rare and special-”

“You’re lying.” You say, looking up. The man freezes mid-sentence, baffled.

“Excuse me?” he coughs. “Ma’am-”

“I know what this is,” you slam your finger down on the glass. Beside you, the two other customers look up. “It’s not from fucking Naboo.”

You didn’t realize how loud you were raising your voice. You can feel the eyes of others in the alley watching you, but you don’t care. You feel a hot, angry rage begin to try and punch up through your stomach and your teeth squeak as they set against each other in an angry scowl.

“Listen, lady,” the man says. “I’m telling you-”

“This is Blirkian silver,” you spit. “From the north desert villages. A place that has been closed off for twelve fucking years after it was bombed to hell by the Empire.”

His eyes widen, but he tries to keep up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about-”

“You’re a fucking grave robber!” you shout.

A small crowd has formed behind you. From the corner of your eye, you can see the glint of beskar as it moves through the mass, working its way towards you. You know you should stop. But it’s too late. Over a decade of bent, broken, sharp emotions are radiating off you, puncturing your skin from the inside.

“You stole these from the unburied,” you smack your hand down again. “You, or whoever you got these from, picked them off the bodies of murdered civilians whose own families haven’t been able-”

You feel hands on your shoulders and know it's him.

_“Terral-_ ” his voice is low, soothing, but it’s too late.

“Sir, your wife is accusing me of-”

“I’m not _accusing!_ ” you shriek. “I’m _TELLING YOU!_ I know these pieces! You stole them from the ruins of the moisture farms, you piece of shit!”

“Terral.” His voice is harder now, and you feel his hands tense on your shoulders.

“How would you know?” the man fires back finally. “Like you said, no one’s been to the north since the revolt was squashed. How are you so sure-”

“BECAUSE THEY’RE _MY MOTHER’S_! YOU _ASSHOLE_!” Without thinking you reach your leg up and kick the display over and onto the shopkeeper, knocking him back. The case breaks at his feet, the glass shattering into a thousand different directions and various pieces flying out. The crowd is silent for a moment, and you think you can hear the sound of your own heartbeat pumping in your ears before time resumes and dozens of hands reach out and begin to grope for the more expensive pieces. And you’re dropping down to your knees with them, scooping up the now-askew jewelry box and scooping everything you recognize towards you as the crowd continues to swarm. Your hands cut against the glass as your pick your treasures off the dirt, but you’re too focused on the task. Your finger loops through the ring just as you feel a strong hand yank you back and through the fleshy crowd. You stumble, bloody in front of Din, who wastes no time pushing you forward and away from the chaos.

You follow, dumbly, as he leads you through to the docks and up the ramp and onto the ship. You move to the kitchen, your jewelry box clutched in your bloody hands, as you sit down and stare down at the pattern that decorates the top. Around you, somehow, the ship begins to lift off, and you don’t realize how long you’ve been sat, staring, until you suddenly feel him beside you once again, and you look up to realize that he must have already put you on the next route.

He pulls his helmet off and looks down at you and it’s a sight. You won’t realize until tomorrow just how banged up you really are, but your knees are bleeding from where you were bent over in broken glass, along with the pieces that are still embedded in your hands. One small fleck in particular had shot out and cut against your cheekbone, and blood is flowing down, dripping onto your clothes.

“Maker, Antares,” he breathes. Now it’s his turn to rush to the nook and retrieve medical supplies. You sit there in your trance as he returns to you, a damp cloth in one hand and the kit in the other. He comes to his knees and reaches out to take one of the hands wrapped around the jewelry box, but you jerk back. He tries again, but you still refuse, yanking the box closer to you.

“Antares,” he repeats. You finally look at him, your eyes already welling up. God. You had tried. You had tried so hard to keep it in, keep it in the past. Now he’s going to know.

“I never thought I’d see this again,” you say, your voice hoarse and bubbly from the sobs you’re trying to keep suppressed. You dig your nails into the box, hit by the sensory memory of being a girl in your grandmother’s home again, assembling the thing with your small, eager hands. Slowly, he watches as you let out a shaking breath and remove the top of the jewelry box. With bloody, quivering fingers, you pick the necklace up by the delicate chain, both of your eyes following the heavy charm as it swoops down and swings between you.

“Din,” you say, your voice finally breaking. “I have something to tell you.”


End file.
